No news is good news at fire station

ELORA – A water rescue on the Grand River in Elora on July 16 turned out to be nothing, said deputy fire chief Jonathan Karn.

He explained there were four men tubing on the river and one man fell off his tube and became separated from his tube and his group.

The water rescue team responded to the emergency call that came in around 8pm, but the man was able to catch up with his group and exited the river where he was supposed to.

“We met him at the exit point and he was fine,” Karn said.

Similarly, Elora firefighters responded to a fire call at Groves Memorial Community Hospital around 7:30pm that turned out to be minor.

Karn said smouldering mulch was seen at the hospital entrance and the fire department was called.

“We used a pail of water to extinguish it,” Karn said.

Although he couldn’t say definitively what caused the mulch to start smoldering, Karn said mulch does warm up in the heat and it is combustible.

“We have had incidents before. Mulch creates its own heat,” he said.

In this case there was no fire, no flame and no impact on hospital operations.