Fires keep responders scrambling

Wind combined with dry conditions reignites several blazes

Strong winds and dry conditions created a perfect storm that led to several brush and farm fires last week that kept members of the Lovell Volunteer Fire Department scrambling.

Assistant chief Bob Mangus said firemen responded to 13 calls between April 1 and April 9, including a massive fire on Friday that kept firemen engaged for more than six hours.

“The big thing that really hurt us was the wind last week,” Mangus said. “When you start getting 30 to 35 mile-per-hour winds, it makes it tough.”

Most of the fires were not active on the day they took off, with controlled burns having been conducted a day or two before, but winds re-activated several blazes.

“When fire gets in a stump of a tree root and takes off (due to wind), you’re off and running again,” Mangus said.

For instance, the Hunt Canal Company had been burning along the canal bank on EO Bischoff Ranch property east of the Brad Tippetts place two days before the fire took off again due to high winds on Wednesday, April 3, Mangus said.

“There was a lot of old, heavy stuff along the canal that had smoldered for a couple of days, then went clear down through Brad’s property,” Mangus said. “We decided we’d better put this out. We didn’t want it to get into his place.”

The call came in at 1:37 p.m. April 3.

“The winds were bad enough that a spark did hit a pile of ground hay, but we were there at the time and knocked it down. They lost a little bit, but not much. There were spot fires in the corrals, too, in the manure.

“It came back the next day and started on the canal bank again, so we put out some hot spots.”

Winds were even stronger on Thursday, April 4, and at 12:52 p.m. a call came in regarding a fire at 1010 Road 18 east of Lovell.

“A ditch being burned jumped into a pasture with heavy vegetation and Russian olive trees. It was heading toward structures, so we put it out,” Mangus said.

Friday, April 5, was a long day for firemen. Firemen first responded to 985 Road 17 at 1:20 p.m. when a controlled burn in a draw two days prior flared up with the wind and pushed into some sagebrush, Mangus said.

Then at 2:42 p.m. firemen were called to the Hessenthaler place west of the Oasis Junction to extinguish a blaze in heavy sagebrush along U.S. 14A that flared up after a corn field had been burned the day before. Firemen returned to the site at 5:02 p.m. when corn stalks that had been piled in a ditch came to life again, Mangus said.

Nine minutes after the Hessenthaler call, firemen responded to the Town of Lovell vegetative waste site north of town for a fire.

At 5:14 p.m. firemen were called to 1098 Perkins Lane. A neighbor was burning a ditch, and wind pushed the fire onto the Andy Perkins property and burned three joints of gated pipe, Mangus said. The neighbor advised he would pay to replace the pipe.

Then came the big one.

Firemen were called at 6:42 p.m. to 712 Lane 12½ west of Lovell for a haystack fire at the John Nation residence. When firemen arrived, they found not only hay burning but also a 40-foot fully enclosed semi-trailer full of repair parts, oil, fertilizer, a four-wheeler, various tools and propane bottles, essentially a shop, Mangus said.

“We had a 30 mile per hour south wind that actually helped us keep the fire off other haystacks and a sileage pit,” he said. “There was a large haystack east of that, and we were working hard to keep it from catching fire.

“Around 9 p.m. we called the National Weather Service in Riverton to see what the wind was going to do the rest of the evening. They advised us that around 11 p.m. the wind was going to shift 180 degrees and start coming from the north. At about 10:30 it did that, so we had to pull our trucks out.”

The change in wind cost the firemen.

“We ended up losing the haystack and the sileage pit,” Mangus said. “We did manage to keep one key haystack from burning. We finally cleared (the scene) at 1:03 a.m. We returned the next day to stand by and keep some water going while John removed some remaining sileage from the pit.

“John lost two piles of ground hay, a stack of straw and one big haystack, plus the sileage pit. We saved one haystack and dumped tanker loads on the haystack to prevent it from burning.”

It was an ordeal, Mangus said, finally coming to an end when rain came to the area on Saturday.

“We had a pretty rugged 12-hour stretch that day,” he said. “At one time all we had left at the hall was one structure truck and one car wreck truck with the Jaws of Life. Deaver-Frannie came to the Nation fire, and we used our tanker and their tanker to haul water from Byron.

“The smoke was terrible. We couldn’t see from me to you. We were damn glad it rained, that’s all I can say. The guys worked their butts off.”