Portage la Prairie Manitoba - The Portage Fire Department had its share of ordeals to handle COVID restrictions in 2021, plus some other issues including a major blaze.
 
Chief and City director of public safety Phil Carpenter says it wasn't too much of a different year, though, all in all.
 
"It was an average year, I guess I'll call it. Starting off, our spring was very dry, so we had multiple calls for grass and wildland fires," says Carpenter.
 
He describes the railway yard fire.
 
"We had a large pile of railway ties that caught fire in our city in between the CN and CP railways, here, where they're storing some ties. And that took us a few hours in order to get that fire put out. We had to put notices out to some of the residents in the vicinity to just to let them know what was going on, and to stay inside out of the toxic environment that these railway ties were producing," says Carpenter.
 
Author unknown.