(Lake Park)– No injuries were reported in a machine shed fire Sunday on the Dickinson-Osceola county line. Lake Park Fire Chief Brandon Ehret tells KUOO news they were called to 1131 100th Avenue around 3:20 pm…
“When we rolled up it was fully involved. Actually about two thirds of the building was involved. About the east third or quarter was petitioned off for a shop. The storage area of the machine shed was pretty much burned to the ground when we got there. We were able to contain it to that. There wasn’t a lot of equipment inside. It sounds like a side-by-side, an old grain truck, and maybe a lawn mower and a couple of other little things, but we got the fire put out. A lot of tin to contend with. We tried to get an excavating company to come over and pull the tin away but we were unable to get one of them, so we just got all of the hot spots put out and basically, yeah, at that point like I said the east third or quarter of the building was still standing but the rest of it was on the ground.”
Fire departments from Harris, Ocheyedan and Round Lake also responded to the scene. Ehret says the cause of the fire as of now is uncertain…
“A passerby actually found it. The homeowner, acreage owner, had come out and saw the smoke and about that time a passerby come in the yard. From the report we got the fire looked like it originated in the southwest corner of the building. In that particular corner there was a generator, a standby generator, for the hog facility and the yard that was there. I don’t have a cause but it’s kind of pointing that that might have been the origin, in that area somewhere.”
Ehret says getting water to fight the fire didn’t pose much of a problem…
“We’re set up that we can draft water through the ice, so we set up on the west side of Silver Lake on the boat ramp. We drilled some holes with our ice auger, got set up, had a portable pump. So actually, you know, it was warm enough yesterday we didn’t have to worry about trucks freezing up and things like that which was very fortunate, so. We were able to get a water supply established in a short time.”
