Some farmers in southern parts of the Alberta and Saskatchewan are dealing with extremely dry conditions this harvest season and that's leading to combine fires.
There was one in Saskatchewan recently, where the operator had only a matter of seconds to exit the cab, before the entire combine was fully engulfed in flames. There's the added danger that the fire could quickly spread through the parched fields. Jason LeBlanc who farms in southeastern Saskatchewan says it was help from social media that prevented a major catastrophe on his farm near the US border. "We have a 'What's App' notification that all of the group of farmers here have and it's strictly for emergencies. I just put on there my land location. I have a combine fire, I need help. One of the responses came back immediately said do you need discs or water.? I said I need it all. It was 15 minutes and we had 6 discs going and two semis of water showed up and numerous people with half tons with water pumps. We managed to get the field (fire) out, that was the priority. The combine was already engulfed, the cab, everything was up in flames within one minute after the original radio call."
It works very well and keeps the neighbours informed according to LeBlanc. "The majority of them (neighbours) were within 10 miles of where I was. Once you send out a group text like that, and I get busy dealing with my fire, they talk amongst themselves and everybody kind of feels out of what's coming. Once you know what's coming, the fire department don't need to bring some things."
Jason says he and his neighbors started using "What's App" for another major problem on the prairies these days, farm thefts, and it's working well for that too.
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