It was a busy weekend for the Ponoka County East Fire Department, responding to 4 calls in a roughly 24 hour time span.

It all started with a rescue call involving a snowmobiler shortly before 7 Saturday night (Feb 10th).

Regional Fire Chief Dennis Jones says they were called to a field just off of Highway 2A north of Ponoka on the east side of the highway.

“I don’t know if he wasn’t familiar with the area, but he actually went into the gravel pit just north of town here, he was able to crawl out and call for help, got on his cellphone.  The guys went out and did initial assessment and got him onto a spine board and were able to take him on the spine board in the back of our command truck to the ambulance, because there was no way the ambulance was getting in there”.

No word on the extent of the man’s injuries.

Crews were then tasked with a structure fire about 3 am yesterday morning (Feb 11th), 10-12 miles east of Ponoka, north of Highway 53.

Jones says a mobile home was completely consumed by fire.

“Nobody was in it, no utilities were hooked up to it, it was being renovated to make ready for occupancy, it was right beside a quonset with a gas line and we were able to save the quonset and the gas line for the farm as well, so that was good”.

Jones says they are still investigating the cause of the fire, there were no injuries.

Then yesterday afternoon (Feb 11th) crews also responded to a car versus train crash just south of Ponoka off Highway 2A at Township 42-4, a car suffered substantial damage but two people managed to walk away without injuries.