Field and Lake Louise firefighters battled a blaze at Emerald Lake Lodge that destroyed an operations building last week.
Jameson Harbottle, Field’s fire chief, said the exact cause of the fire is still under investigation, but said there was a loud explosion that sent debris all over the place. The fire occurred about 4:15 a.m. on Tuesday (March 22) at the resort’s operations compound.
“A lot of the structure had collapsed by the time we got there,” said Harbottle. “There’s not much left and there was a lot of luck involved that no one was hurt. There were pieces of the building found throughout the parking lot.”
Martin Parkes, operations manager for Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts’ mountain properties, which includes Emerald Lake Lodge, said the maintenance shop and nearby storage shed were completely destroyed.
“It’s completely gone, it’s flattened basically,” he said, noting there was more than $1 million worth of damage.
“We’re lucky no one was hurt. Things can be replaced, but people can’t. So we’re extremely happy no one was hurt.”
A member of the staff reported a fire and then a loud explosion followed.
A maintenance supervisor was on shift at the time and heading towards the maintenance shed when he was radioed the fire alarm had gone off.
Parkes said the maintenance supervisor was lucky he was not there when the fire and explosion occurred.
“It totally depends on how his night goes. He does check down in that building, and he was actually heading that way,” he said. “Extremely lucky.”
Parkes said the resort plans to rebuild, noting Emerald Lake Lodge is off the grid and that’s where generators are stored.
“We were actually back up with power by 5 p.m. due to all the hard work,” he said.
Eight firefighters from Field were joined by five firefighters from Lake Louise.
Harbottle said a large part of the building had already collapsed by the time the fire department arrived.
“There were lots of other little structures around it and we were able to prevent fire from spreading to those,” he said. “It was quite a hazardous site. Lots of propane tanks, diesel pumps and fuel.”
Harbottle said the fire was under control by 7 a.m.
“By about sunrise, it had been knocked down significantly,” he said. “Lake Louise left about then and we stayed until about 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.”
