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Grass Fires Are Exhausting Some Area Fire Departments

April 27, 2022 Steve Schwaller

(Undated)– Area fire departments were kept on the run Tuesday and again this morning (Wed.) with grass and field fires. In fact, members of the Spirit Lake Fire Department have had little to no sleep over the past day or so.

One of the biggest fires Tuesday was in the Spring Run Complex. Doug Hanna of the Milford Fire Department says fire departments from Milford, Spirit Lake, Lake Park, Terril and Superior were called to that location…

“So I had a couple of guys down in Westport Township and we were doing a controlled burn down there on some CRP land when this fire got paged out at Spring Run, and Brandon Ehret from Lake Park, the chief over there, he kind of took over and ran that for us. So that was really nice of him. I appreciate it like more than you can ever say, so. But yeah, Lake Park and Spirit Lake even released one of their UTV’s. Spring Run is challenging. It’s got a lot of stuff going on out there and it’s big.”

Hanna says the fire covered a large area…

“I don’t know how big Spring Run is, but I think we burned it all. Because the Fish and Wildlife guys came in and they were doing back burns, so maybe it wasn’t all out of control, but when you look at it now, it will look worse because they back burned into that grass. We couldn’t drive any more. It was dark. You don’t know where the wet spots are. You just sink.”

Spirit Lake and Lake Park firefighters were called late Tuesday afternoon to some round hay bales on fire that also started some nearby pastureland on fire about a mile east of the Little Sioux River, west of Montgomery. Spirit Lake firefighters were called back to that location early this morning.

Spirit Lake and numerous other fire departments were called late Tuesday night to a fire that was burning in a slough and grassland area just north of the grade on the north side of Big Spirit Lake.

Hanna says some of the fires have been the result of controlled burns that got out of hand. He encourages those who feel they must burn to do so with an abundance of caution, and to have plenty of water nearby. He says the best advice is to wait until things green up some more and we get some measurable rainfall.

Fortunately no injuries have been reported in any of the fires.