The Steinbach Fire Department attended a truck fire around 11:30 a.m. this Saturday just east of Highway 12 on Clearspring Road.

Assistant Fire Chief Russ Reimer says the call came in as a truck that had been on fire but was no longer burning. He notes when they arrived on scene they realized that the semi-truck was parked inside a building when it caught fire and that it may have escalated to a structure fire as well.

"We treated it as a structure fire until we could prove that it was actually out. We were using our thermal imagers, We broke some glass to start ventilating, we opened up the overhead door and then we did put some water with foam onto the semi-truck itself. We sent somebody up into the attic and checked that out and that was significantly burnt throughout the attic as well."

Reimer says the truck had initially been parked in the building around 2 a.m. He notes it appears as though it caught fire sometime in the early morning and burned until it ran out of oxygen at which point it just smoldered.

Reimer says the semi-truck is a total loss and they estimate $400,000 in damage to the building and the contents. He adds it is a good thing no one opened the any of the doors while the fire was smoldering as the rush of oxygen could have reignited the fire quickly and created an explosion.