Fuchsia Dragon | special to the Fitzhugh
Craig Gilbert | [email protected]
The gut-wrenching irony that played out in Jasper’s industrial park on a frigid Dec. 1 was inescapable.
Jasper Fire and Ice, or JFI Foods, was belching smoke from a blaze believed to have started in the back of the building sometime before 9:30 a.m. Saturday morning.
Water from the aerial fire truck dousing the front of 29 Stan Wright Crescent formed first a river that followed the grade across the road, inundating the bottle depot’s entrance on its way to the woods, then created a frozen lake firefighters and other first responders had to watch their step on.
A major restaurant supplier operated by a well-known family, the Groths, was reduced to a blackened, icicle-dressed shell on a canvas that cruelly captured its namesake. Friends and neighbours hopelessly looked on and reacted with heartbreak to videos posted on social media as acrid smoke from the warehouse fire billowed hundreds of feet into the air over the townsite.
It started with a report of light smoke coming from an S-block building at 9:30 a.m.
Assistant fire chief Amy West responded from home in the command unit and was in charge on scene. She said an initial crew of 15 firefighters responded and a backup crew of four more rotated in later in the day.
“There was light smoke showing from all four sides of the building, so that kind of indicates to us that there was quite a large fire in there already,” she said Tuesday. “We started with interior operations but with the condition of the building we eventually transitioned to exterior operations.”
There were “very small” flare-ups the following morning and afternoon.
“They’re pretty common with a warehouse fire such as that, with the contents in there, it’s really hard to get completely out at once so we were expecting that,” West explained. “There was a lot of chemicals stored in there, but none of the big quantities of it ignited. They were all towards the front of the warehouse and we were able to protect that portion, we got some heavy water on it right away.”
She said the owner was there to tell her about the building’s contents which helped direct the response, an advantage firefighters don’t always have.
S-block was evacuated and gated off by 2 p.m. as the building continued to smolder.
It took over a day to extinguish the fire. The JFI building was destroyed. West and fire chief Greg Van Tighem are conducting an investigation that she said is likely to last a couple more days. The insurance companies for the building’s owner and the tenant will also conduct their own probes.
West stressed that the Jasper Fire Department was not the only agency at the incident, from paramedics who were on scene throughout helping firefighters recuperate and monitoring their vitals, to bylaw officers securing the area and eventually the entire industrial park so firefighters were able to work. RCMP and town operations staff were there as well.
“It was definitely a multi-agency response and everyone worked really well together.”
JFI Foods is a major supplier of cleaning materials and food to local hotels and restaurants. With the JFI stock gone, other local business could feel an impact too.
“I was terribly sad to hear the news of the JFI Foods fire - the whole of the town could see it because of the large plume of smoke,” Richard Cooper, president of Jasper Chamber of Commerce, said. “JFI Foods is an exceptionally locally run company that delivers a plethora of supplies to businesses in town. It is likely to impact a number of businesses as a result. I hope to see them resume business as quickly as possible. We are trying to see what we are being challenged with and how we can help them get back underway.”
