(Spirit Lake)– Firefighters from Spirit Lake and Superior had to contend with strong wind and cold temperatures while battling a hay bale fire this (Wed.) morning. Spirit Lake Fire Chief Pat Daly says they were called around 6:50 am to 1416 255th Avenue, which is just north of Fed Ex. He says eight to nine bales were on fire…
“We don’t know if they got put away a little warm. That’s kind of what we’re looking at, and the rain we had kind of put it into spontaneous, but there was probably eight or nine bales that we had torn apart out there.”
He says the fire was contained to the bales themselves. Daly says there was a hoop building nearby with some cattle in it but the wind was blowing the fire the opposite direction. He says they had help from several agencies and individuals…
“There was law enforcement out there. We also called Superior in because we didn’t know how much water we were going to need, so they brought a couple of tankers over. We had a couple of tractors came in. The guy had a skid loader going and another skid loader came in to help him, so we had some outside help, too, so.”
Daly says battling a hay bale fire is always a tedious process…
“That’s something that you have to tear apart. You can put thousands of gallons on a bale and it won’t go out until you tear it apart. So that’s basically what the skid loaders and the tractors were doing, was breaking it down and then we would spray it down with water in between and just kind of keep working it until you get it all out.”
Firefighters were on the scene about an hour and-a-half.
