Sibley Fire Department Fights Two Rural Fires Sunday

Date posted - September 17, 2012

Sibley, Iowa — The Sibley Fire Department was busy on Sunday, responding to not one, but two fires.

Sibley Fire Chief Kenny Huls reports that they were paged about 2 PM Sunday to a barn fire at Pierce Avenue and 130th Street, north of Sibley; about three quarters of a mile west of Highway 60.

The place has no house, only outbuildings, and is owned by Marvin Lopau Jr., says Huls. He says he determined that the barn started on fire from embers from a nearby pit fire. But Lopau says he has not been burning anything out there. Lopau says he came out to check the place and when he arrived, he found the barn on fire.

Huls says by the time the fire department got there, the barn was already only a pile of burning rubble. Huls says with the dry conditions, their main concern was exposure to the west where there was a full standing corn field, and to the north a full standing bean field.

Huls says the fire burned all the way to the north ditch, but firefighters were able to stop it before it jumped the road.

The Bigelow Fire Department was paged for mutual aid.

The chief says they used about 4000 gallons of water. Lopau claims the barn wasn’t worth much and puts the damage estimate at only about $500.

Chief Huls says somebody had obviously been burning in the burn pit, but they don’t know who it was.

About 20 firefighters were on-scene for about an hour.

But, Huls said they were getting their gear cleaned and put away when they received another fire call, about 4 PM. This one was a smaller fire in the soybean field on the east side of the Osceola County Conservation Board’s gun range south of Sibley, near Pierce Avenue and 180th Street.

Some soybeans in the bean field were apparently started on fire from hot shot, shot from the gun range.

Chief Huls reminds people that the rains have been helpful, but be careful.

He says there is no burning ban in Osceola County right now, but that is subject to change depending on conditions and how many fires they end up putting out in the next few weeks.

Osceola County is the only county in our area without a burning ban.

Huls says if you do live in Osceola County, you may burn if you follow the rules, but he advises extreme caution. He says do your burning in the early morning when there’s no wind. Stand right there and monitor the fire, with water nearby, or a tractor and disk available, should the fire get out of hand.