If not for an early morning workout by a member of the Estevan Fire Department, and a keen eye on the drive back from the gym, things could have gone a lot differently for one family in Estevan when their deck caught on fire. As it was, this member caught the blaze early. 

At about 6:30 in the morning that day, after what had already been a hectic week for the fire department, they got the call of the deck fire. Thankfully, the firefighter helped get the situation under control before it became uncontainable. 

"Kind of a unique situation occurring as we had an off-duty firefighter that was returning home from the gym," said Fire Chief Dale Feser, "when he observed an unusual amount of smoke coming from an area. So he decided to double back and check on it and found that there was a deck fire that was occurring that was still rather small at the time."

At that point, the firefighter woke up the occupants of the home and set to work putting the fire out. It was small enough at that point that he was able to bring it under control with the garden hose, but it got dangerously close to being far worse. 

"Due to the time and the occupants still sleeping," said Feser, "had it not been observed and mitigated right away, it could've definitely escalated into a home fire involving the exterior of the structure and spreading inward." 

The cause of the fire was a cigarette that someone had tried to put out in a plant pot instead of in an ashtray. While that might've seemed safer than throwing it in the grass, there are added dangers to putting out a cigarette in that fashion. 

"You never, ever want to extinguish any smoking materials in the potting soil," Feser explained. "They have extremely high nitrate levels in there and they will start smouldering fires inside the potting soil itself. This indeed was the case, which spread to the actual wood and deck components and started the deck on fire as well."

The fire department was called out again to an outdoor fire at Woodlawn Regional Park at around 4:30 in the afternoon. A large woodpile had become completely engulfed in flames. When the fire department arrived, campers in the area were fighting the ground fire with garden hoses. 

"We spent quite a few hours there to ensure complete extinguishment," Feser said. "Due to the close proximity to the campers as well as some long, unkept vegetation and some of the recreational vehicles that are stored out there, we wanted to make sure there was no chance of a rekindle occurring."

Park management said they had no controlled burn at the time, so Feser thought the likely cause was someone disposing of some ashes from their burn pit that may have had some embers left over.