The Spirit Lake Fire Department spent most of Wednesday afternoon and evening battling a grass and tree fire east of Spirit Lake. Fire Chief Pat Daly tells KUOO news they were called a little before 1:00 pm to 1662 260th Avenue, just east of Arthur Heights…
“The people there were burning two days ago and the winds went and picked up yesterday, got the grass going, got it into some trees. We were there for a couple of hours and went back to the station and then we got called back, I don’t know, an hour later. It got up into a dead tree and we couldn’t get to it. It was clear up in the top. We finally got an excavator in there to push the tree down so we could finish putting it out.”
Daly says it’s further proof as to how volatile the fire conditions are right now…
“Yeah, it’s terrible. And that wind was coming up. I’ll tell you what, people burning, they have to look at that weather forecast even a couple of days down. If the wind’s coming they’ve got some of those burn piles that stay hot down in the bottom and that wind comes up and just gets them going again and it just takes off.”
Daly says he’s unsure as to the size of the area that burned. He says they’ll be determining that later today. No injuries were reported.
