Lightning strike sparks Sask. oil tank fire

Oil tanks burn near Stoughton WATCH: A lightning strike led to a fire at an oil battery complex near Stoughton, Sask.

Fire crews from Stoughton, Sask. responded to an oil battery fire on Monday after a lightning strike ignited a blaze.

Stoughton’s fire chief Pat Slater said they received a call about the incident around 1:30 Monday afternoon.

Slater said his crews were on the scene for around three hours and arrived to find the battery site nearly fully engulfed in flames and smoke.

“At that time the operators took control of the scene just to keep people out, they stayed there overnight and this morning just to make sure there was no further damage done or spread anywhere,” Slater said.

According to Slater, the fire was about 12 miles from the town of Stoughton with the closest infrastructure to the scene about four miles away.

Slater said after a lightning strike on an oil battery – the damage is done and attempting to put out the fire does nothing but jeopardize people’s safety.

“Basically we just secured the area and blocked off the road so nobody could come in or out and kept everybody safe.”

Slater said there is a berm around the tanks and after a lightning strike the best course of action is to monitor the scene and let the fire burn itself out while making sure no flames spread to the surrounding fields.

“With a berm around them there are no massive floods going out doing environmental damage, it’s all contained to the immediate area inside that berm,” he said.

Slater said while not an everyday occurrence, lightning strikes on oil batteries are more common than most people realize.

“It’s kind of normal for these things,” he said. “When they get hit by lightning this was something that you would expect to happen.”