The Sundre area’s camping season seems to have ended safely and quietly, with no major emergencies reported throughout the duration of the Labour Day long weekend.
“We were pretty quiet,” said Sundre Fire Department Chief Marty Butts.
Over the span of the weekend, Butts said the fire department only received and responded to one medical assist to lend the Sundre EMS crew a hand. Four volunteer firefighters were dispatched to assist, but were able to get back after about half an hour, he said.
“That was it,” he said, adding when asked that there were no major motor vehicle collisions or structure fires.
The all but exclusively uninterrupted weekend was quite welcome, he said.
“That was good news on the home front — we had our fireman’s barbecue that weekend,” he said.
Hosting the event annually on his property located west of town, Butts said the family-oriented gathering provides not only a team-building opportunity for the volunteers, but also plenty of fun activities for the kids, including zip lines and treasure hunts.
“We’ve got lots of room to do lots of cool things,” he said, adding most of the more than 30-member department’s volunteers were able to make it out.
Meanwhile, over at the Sundre RCMP detachment, Cpl. Joe Mandel also reported a fairly tame weekend.
“We still had a lot of users coming through but there was a definite decline in numbers from the previous long weekends,” said Mandel.
The corporal attributed the mostly uneventful few days to poor weather forecasts as well as parents and families getting their children prepared to go back to class, being more likely to spend time shopping for school supplies than going out camping.
“The weekend was uneventful with no concerns, which was nice as my office had to scale back bringing in additional resources to assist the Sundre complement,” said Mandel.
“This reduction was due to fiscal restraints and commitments elsewhere.”
There were four checkstops conducted in Sundre as well as out west on Highway 584 by Coal Camp Road, he said, adding four impaired investigations related to alcohol stemmed from the police enforcement initiative out of about 300 motorists checked.
According to a press release from Alberta RCMP, between Aug. 30 and Sept. 2, police across the province responded to 226 motor vehicle collisions, which resulted in 27 injuries.
Mandel said the local detachment received 22 calls for service during the same period of time.
“The calls ranged from an accidental SOS deployment from a GPS beacon in the area of Ya Ha Tinda, a neighbour dispute, fireworks being set off in the Bearberry area, traffic complaints, a few minor traffic collisions, suspicious vehicle and an overdue quadder who returned home,“ he said.
