The exact cause of the fire at Sundre Contracting Co. on May 19 has been narrowed down to one of the trucks parked on the lot at the time.
“It's a Kenworth truck and it's apparently a fairly common problem with that particular brand of truck, that the wiring crosses and goes up to the battery or something and it starts to burn,” explained Cindy Bubela, office manager at Sundre Contracting.
She said they are still waiting for an estimate on the rebuild, so there is no estimated cost of damage yet, but the total damage is estimated to be in the millions of dollars.
“We've replaced some of the trucks, but we haven't rebuilt the buildings yet,” she said.
The investigation for the cause of the fire has been an ongoing process for the last five months.
“Kenworth has taken those trucks and they are doing their in-house investigation on them because there has been a known problem with those models of trucks,” said Marty Butts, Sundre's fire chief, in late June, noting that the trucks were removed from the site and inspected.
“With such a big fire and so much damage it's hard to determine a cause sometimes right away,” said Butts. “It takes a while to go through all the evidence.”
The fire destroyed six semi trucks and damaged three buildings on the property. It took roughly three hours to completely extinguish. More than 20 firefighters from the Sundre Fire Department were battling the fire and had to call for mutual aid.
A crew from the Olds Fire Department attended with a ladder truck and a pumper truck as well as a crew from the Didsbury Fire Department with a pumper truck.
The business was closed at the time, but one of the staff members who lives near the property saw the smoke in the early afternoon and dialled 911.
Butts said it didn't take long before the fire department was receiving multiple phone calls from neighbours and passersby.
Jason Harder, assistant manager at Sundre Contracting, said the company lost six trucks and some trailers, plus part of a building, part of a shop and all boiler, heating and electrical systems.
