(Lake Park)– A wildfire Thursday halfway between Spirit Lake and Lake Park burned a significant amount of land. The Lake Park Fire Department was called to the area of 1631 170th Street, several miles south of Highway 9 just west of the Little Sioux River, around 3:45 pm. Fire Chief Brandon Ehret says they quickly called for assistance from the Milford and Spirit Lake Fire Departments…
“The fire was moving so fast it was hard to get up to the leading edge of it. It actually burned right into a building site about a half to three quarters of a mile north of where it originated. We were lucky that it did not burn into the acreage. No buildings were damaged or burned down as a result. The landowners/homeowners had everything mowed down real nice so the fire basically broke there. We did have a propane tank that got kind of warm and bled off. Milford was able to get in there with their tanker and their gun on the front to cool that down and suppress any fire that was around any buildings at all. All in all that was a major positive for that, we didn’t lose any structures. We were able to start to get a little bit of a handle on it. We had three farmers with discs running on either side of it and creating fire lines to the north in case it happened to jump across the Little Sioux River. Had it done that we probably would have chased it all the way to Highway 9 but luckily it did not jump so we were able to contain it to the river bank.”
Ehret says firefighters were assisted by a number of other agencies as well as some farmers…
“Lakes Regional Ambulance and Lake Park Ambulance was out there. The Sheriff’s Office was helping coordinate. We actually had to evacuate at least the one residence. And then we had the crew from U.S. Fish and Wildlife that does a lot of the strike burns in the county. You see them out in the spring doing burns on these grasslands. They were instrumental. They really put the science into the wildland firefighting attack so it really helped to work with those guys to get fire breaks coordinated and then they brought some equipment along, too, to help with it.”
Ehret says Dickinson County Emergency Management also played a crucial role in assisting firefighters. He offers this advice as the extremely high fire danger continues…
“As everybody probably knows we’re not in a burn ban right now in Dickinson county and, you know, we feel most people in the county are pretty good about not starting fires and burning when those conditions are like this. We’ve found that this time of year a lot of our problems stem from bearings and things on combines and discs and farm equipment. Fortunately we’ve had very little, if any, we’ve only had, I think, maybe three calls in the county this fall so we’ve been very fortunate. Just everybody keep vigilant. Don’t be lighting fires right now, it’s very dry, very windy of course. If something does get going make sure you get 911 called immediately and we’ll come running. All in all it’s been a good fall and like I said nothing was, we lost no structures yesterday and no one was injured, so we were very fortunate.”
***UPDATE***Ehret says he met with the owner of the property where the fire started. He says that person had been doing some burning in a burn pit last week and that Thursday’s strong wind stirred up an ember. Ehret says that same person is who called 911 to report the fire. Approximately 135 acres burned.
