UPDATE: The fire department now says the small fire was in front of the restaurant and had already been extinguished. There was also a distinct smell of gas. The incident is being treated as suspicious.
It appears someone may have tried to start a fire in Mary Brown’s near Walmart this morning. The Grande Prairie Fire Department responded to a small fire at the back of the building around 9:20 a.m. and Platoon Chief Tony Lutzmann says when they went inside there were high levels of flammable vapours.
“When we set up ready to deal with any potential fire, we found that there was gasoline spread throughout the occupancy in the restaurant, and spent the morning basically cleaning up the flammable liquids and ensuring that the occupancy was safe.”
Lutzmann adds that the business was closed at the time so someone would have likely had to break in. A window was also broken, but it’s believed that happen within the last week and not this morning.
RCMP and Fire Investigators are still on the scene trying to determine what happened and we expect to learn more this afternoon.