By Patrick Burles - @PatrickBurles on Twitter

Fire at north side business deemed accidental – no financial loss

Sep 21, 2017 | 4:26 PM

LETHBRIDGE – (UP-DATED)  A total of 21-firefightes from four stations were called in to battle a fire at National Salvage in north Lethbridge around 3:30 Thursday afternoon (Sept. 21). It happened in the salvage yard located along 33 St. North.

As of 5:15 p.m., firefighters were just dealing with hot spots.

Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services platoon chief, Peter Kidd, discussed what they found upon arrival at the scene.

“A pile of cars started on fire, the scrap vehicles. I don’t know how it started,” Kidd explained. “When we got here it was fully involved, a huge plume of black smoke rolling off this pile.”

Kidd also acknowledged the potential health impact of the smoke from such a fire.

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“It is a scrap yard, so who knows what’s in there… your car is full of plastic stuff and it’s pretty nasty when it burns,” said Kidd. “It’s pretty toxic smoke I would say that’s coming off that pile.”

Brian Kenwood, manager of a neighbouring business, says he heard there was a fire sometime after 3 p.m.

“I went back there just thinking it would be a car on fire, and there was half-a-dozen cars,” Kenwood told Lethbridge News Now. “It was fully engulfed, and the flames had to have been 15-20 feet in the air. And there was some propane tanks I think, small ones that you could see, little twisters coming up out of the fire. The fuel tanks were going, popping and hissing.”

An investigation determined the incident was accidental. There were no injuries reported, and there is no dollar loss resulting from this fire as the vehicled that burned were scheduled to be recycled.