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The Saskatoon fire department is investigating the cause of a blaze that disrupted traffic on the University Bridge, the fourth fire under the bridge in four years.
Firefighters extinguished the fire Sunday afternoon, but it melted a plastic sewage pipe that runs underneath the bridge. A news release issued by city hall Monday said the fire was “human-caused,” but offered no further details.
The bridge was deemed structurally sound and all four lanes of traffic on the bridge were restored Monday — although a sewage pump remained in the westbound lane impeding traffic at the east end of the bridge, and it’s expected to stay there for most of the week.
Sewage spilled from the melted pipe onto the ground near Spadina Crescent and entered a storm sewer pipe that empties into the South Saskatchewan River.
“We don’t really have any way of preventing someone [from accessing the area underneath the bridge]. Where there’s a will, there’s a way is certainly what we’re seeing,” Brendan Lemke, director of water and waste operations for the city, told reporters Monday.
“We’ve done our best. There’s barbed wire on the tops of the fences that were put in place.”
The walkway on the north side of the bridge will remain closed for an undetermined time to accommodate a temporary sewer line running the length of the bridge.
Lemke acknowledged there has been “homeless activity” under the bridge, but could not confirm whether anyone had been living there. A blanket could be seen hanging over the archway near the melted sewer pipe Monday afternoon.
Lemke called the fire “suspicious.”
City hall does not have video monitoring of the area under the bridge. Any decisions on tighter security restrictions would need to be made by city council, Lemke added. Crews were cleaning up the frozen sewage spilled onto the ground, according to the city.
If Sunday’s fire is linked to a homeless encampment, it would mark the fourth straight time for a fire under the 110-year-old bridge, which accommodates 35,800 vehicles a day, according to 2024 numbers.
Lemke said the damage from this fire appeared to be less than one from January 2025, when a fire under the east end of the bridge resulted in about $90,000 in damage and closed the bridge to traffic for most of two days.
That fire began in a homeless encampment under the bridge and resulted in 1.5 million litres of raw sewage spilled into the river. Fires under the bridge in October 2024 and June 2023 were also attributed to encampments.
