It was a frantic weekend for many firefighters and residents in the southeast. Brush fires started Thursday night in the Stuartburn area, southwest of Vita, causing evacuations Friday around Stuartburn. Then, propelled by high winds, the blaze raced past Vita and Zhoda and north toward Marchand. Just before reaching Marchand Friday night, a wind shift pushed the fire east of the community which led to threats in Sandilands, Woodridge and St. Labre.

La Broquerie fire chief Al Nadeau says it's simply amazing there was almost no loss of private property. "In the whole southeast, the only thing we've lost so far over this crazy weekend was 1 garage in the Rosa area(south of St. Malo). That's all that was lost. It's absolutely amazing that we haven't lost more property than that," said Nadeau. The fires burned an estimated 20 thousand hectares of forest.

He says things got really tense for La Broquerie early Friday evening when the fire crossed Highway #12 near Zhoda. Nadeau explains, "The fire crossed the highway at about a kilometre a minute, it was travelling straight towards Marchand. That's when we decided to call an evacuation notice for the town of Marchand because that fire was coming so fast. During the evacuation, we noticed that the wind was starting to shift a little and that really helped us save the area." Nadeau notes they had deployed special equipment such as water tankers to surround Marchand in event the fire had not shifted.

And Nadeau adds the firefighting effort was a marvel. He says, "The mutual aid system worked absolutely beautifully. We had fire departments from the Pembina Triangle area, from south central, northeast, districts from all around, everybody participated together so beautifully." He also praises residents of communities that were evacuated for being so cooperative and efficient.

Nadeau will find out sometime Tuesday morning whether the threat has eased sufficiently to begin releasing fire equipment back to where it came from. Firefighters spent part of Monday dousing hot spots.

Meanwhile, Nadeau says this event again pointed out the need for better cell phone service. He explains, communication among firefighters and other officials was difficult at best throughout this emergency because cell phone service is so poor.