Coming up on the CHMA daily news roundup:
Sackville gets a new historic landmark
Why springtime is bad for forest fires
and CHMA checks in with Perpetual Motion Dance
But first:
The province has reported another new case of COVID-19 in the Campbellton region, this time, in a person over the age of 90.
Last week, a child from the Campbellton region was reported positive with the disease.
Both cases are still under investigation.
Testing for COVID-19 continues at a level just below that recommended by New Brunswick Chief Medical Officer of Health Jennifer Russell.
The province announced 348 new test results Tuesday.
123 of those results came from the South East region.
Sackville has a new historic landmark.
It’s a memorial to four Methodist churches that stood one after the other in downtown Sackville for nearly two centuries.
The memorial consists of a huge church bell beside a plaque in the old Methodist cemetery across from the Cranewood bakery on Main Street.
It’s next to the site where the Sackville Methodist/United Church stood until it was torn down nearly five years ago.
Local historian Charles Scobie says that church’s twelve-hundred pound bell serves as a memorial to all four Methodist churches:
CLIP OPENS: “It’s one of the very few things that are left…
ENDS: “…some historical details of each of the churches.”
Charles Scobie says the Sackville Rotary Club contributed seven hundred dollars to erect the historic plaque while developer John Lafford donated the big bell.
Scobie says Methodists brought their evangelical religion to Sackville from Yorkshire in the 1770s.
Over many years, he says, they helped build the town and supported the development of Mount Allison University.
Help is on its way for Town of Amherst taxpayers who have been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 state of emergency.
Amherst town council approved a tax financing policy Monday night establishing a one-time property tax installment payment plan for owners of residential and commercial properties.
Mayor David Kogon noted the policy is a tax financing program and not a tax forgiveness program.
He also said those who “can pay their taxes should pay their taxes when they are due.”
The policy will be based on a template developed by the Association of Municipal Administrators of Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities.
It will give taxpayers 24 months to pay their 2020-2021 property taxes in installments.
Qualified participants will be charged interest at a rate of 1.35 per cent per year.
To qualify individuals and businesses must provide proof of financial hardship as a result of the state of emergency and their current tax accounts must be in good standing.
Two more people have died on New Brunswick highways.
In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, a 35-year-old woman from Moncton was killed in a crash on Highway 15 in Dieppe.
RCMP believe the woman lost control of her vehicle and crashed into the median.
A tractor-trailer travelling in the same direction was also involved in the collision.
RCMP have also released information on another crash that took place May 21st in Public Landing, near Saint John.
There a 33-year-old man from Central Greenwich died following a single-vehicle crash in a pickup truck.
So far in May, seven people have died in motor vehicle collisions on New Brunswick roads and highways.
After executing a search warrant in a home southwest of Fredericton last week, RCMP seized over 50 guns including 24 restricted or prohibited weapons. Police also seized more than three kilograms of what is believed to be cocaine, and nearly 5.5 kilograms of what is believed to be crystal meth.
27-year-old Monique Boyer was arrested on Monday and charged with possession of a prohibited firearm.
Police say the investigation is ongoing.
New Brunswick’s forest fire watch says that despite a burn ban, the Department of Natural Resources and volunteer fire departments have responded to more than 70 fires since May 18.
Erica Butler spoke to Roger Collet from the New Brunswick fire centre.
Collet says that there’s an above average number of fires this year mostly due to dry conditions.
He says about 60 to 70 percent of forest fires happen in the spring season.
AUDIO CLIP 1
that’s the tricky thing is is that even though you know maybe the ground is wet, the grass is still all dead. It’s dried because it’s not actually laying in the water, it’s standing above it. So it’s not absorbing any moisture at all. So you know, if you get a little bit of a breeze or anything at all that stuff dries up real quick. So grass, dead leaves. So that stuff lays on the ground and can easily so and then once that gets going, then all we really need is, you know, a little bit of a breeze and might whip up some members of low low hanging branches from softwood trees and things like that, especially when it’s dry. The flame can start touching that and then it starts to climb up into the trees and that’s with the wind. That’s how it gets moving.
Collet says that human activity is generally at the root of most springtime fires.
AUDIO CLIP 2
springtime fires unless and when we don’t, you know, get a lot of thunderstorms at this time of year, are all human caused fires. So they could be accidental, industry, you know, piece of equipment that might have got the fire going on. It could be somebody that was out fishing, that maybe you know, had a fire for their lunch, which probably weren’t supposed to but didn’t extinguish it properly. Could be somebody who dropped cigarette in the wrong place and it didn’t get extinguished. So, you know, accidentally could be possibly be actual, you know, somebody just thought well, because especially a lot of people still, for some reason like to burn grass off in their fields and things like that. So sometimes that gets away and will cause
fires so
So at this time of year yeah, they’re they’re pretty much all human caused fires
On Monday, firefighters responding to a bush fire in the Irishtown Nature Park in Moncton.
Currently one large forest fire is burning out of control, south of Mirimachi.
The burn ban is in force across all counties of New Brunswick, and Collet says that the fire centre is asking people to go one step further, and avoid the woods.
AUDIO CLIP 3
that’s probably not going to change so we get a significant amount of rain. So even if we got four or five millimeters of rain, you know, we’re probably not going to change the status on that. Right now actually, we’re asking that all public, stay out of the forest right now.
It’s there’s no
if there’s no reason for them to be there, we’re asking that they not go to the woods, I guess.
Oh, wow, just for safety. Just
pick Yeah, for safety. Like I said, these fires are generally accidental, they may not even know that they caused it. So, you know, driving around on a TV sometimes can be, you know, little twigs and stuff that gets wedged into near their exhaust system heat up and turn into an ember and fall off and then that’s what gets the fire going. And they would never know that that even caused the fire. So at this time, we’re we’re asking that the public stay out of the out of the woods, if at all possible.
That was Roger Collet of New Brunswick’s provincial fire centre speaking with Erica Butler.
Finally on today’s roundup, Mahalia Thompson-Onichino is here with another instalment of The Check-In.
Mahalia called up RENÉE RIOUX of Perpetual Motion Dance to find out how the studio is coping with COVID-19.
AUDIO:
That was the CHMA daily news roundup.
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