Jamestown Rural Fire Department extinguishes fires Saturday
Oct. 6—JAMESTOWN — The Jamestown Rural Fire Department extinguished grass fires and a grain dryer fire on Saturday, Oct. 5, spending more than eight hours fighting the fires, said Fire Chief Brian Paulson.
The department responded to a reported large grass fire at 1:13 p.m. at 4535 84th Ave. SE at Ypsilanti.
"That one was started by an ATV going down a prairie trail," Paulson said. "The exhaust threw some sparks and it started an unharvested (soy)bean field on fire and a cattle pasture on fire."
Twenty-two firefighters responded with 10 apparatus, Paulson said. The National Weather Service had issued a high wind warning and red flag warning for late Saturday morning into early Sunday, and strong winds hampered firefighters' efforts.
"It took us a while to get to the head of the fire to get it somewhat under control," Paulson said.
Material from a harvested soybean field bordering the other field and pasture blew into the them, creating spot fires.
"It just took a long time," Paulson said, to extinguish the fires. "A farmer brought in a digger and we dug up some of the unharvested soybeans to cut a fire break and that seemed to work pretty well."
They were at the scene for almost 5 hours, until 6 p.m., he said.
During that call, a second call was reported at 2:35 p.m. at 3480 78th Ave. SE near Eldridge, for a reported grain dryer fire. Three units at the grass fire responded to that call along with another unit on standby at the fire station and a total of eight firefighters, Paulson said. They were at that location for an hour and a half.
Windy conditions combined with drying corn with the grain dryer caused the fire, Paulson said.
"They emptied it and sprayed it down," he said.
There was minimal damage, he said.
JRFD had returned to the fire station and was cleaning up its equipment when firefighters were dispatched again at 7:04 p.m. to the rekindled grass fire near Ypsilanti, Paulson said.
"We sent seven apparatus and 19 firefighters on that," he said. "We got two diggers out on that one from local farmers to help plow up more of the soybean field. And we were out there until 9 p.m. putting out spot fires again."
An estimated 100 acres burned in the two grass fire calls, he said. No injuries were reported.
Paulson said the Pingree Fire Department also responded to a combine fire Saturday that was stopped with the help of diggers.
He said people need to be aware of the weather and how dry conditions are at this time.
"Our last two grass fires we had have been started by ATVs," Paulson said. "We're extremely dry and ... if there's critical fire weather such as red flag warnings and whatnot out there, probably just don't need to be out there. This is not a good time to be driving ATVs when we're in this fire weather we're in right now. If we don't need to be out there we should just probably not be out there until we get some moisture."
