North of Hawarden, Iowa — A carelessly-discarded cigarette butt gets the blame for a large fire that took eleven fire departments to put out on Sunday north of Hawarden.
According to Hawarden Fire Chief Duane Schiefen, the page came in about ten minutes before 1:00 p.m. It was a field fire, just north of Hawarden on the South Dakota side.
He says it started with a cigarette that was thrown in the ditch. With the strong winds on Sunday, it didn’t take much for it to head north and burn 50 to 60 acres of mostly harvested cornstalks. He tells us that in their investigation stage, they actually found the cigarette butt that started the whole fire.
Schiefen says in addition to the Hawarden firefighters, the Ireton, Akron, Alcester, Hudson, Sioux Center, Rock Valley, Beresford, Fairview, Hudson, and Canton fire departments helped to put out the fire. He says at least ten farmers with disks helped disk firebreaks, and POET Biorefining at Hudson provided water to help put out the fire. He says no injuries were reported, and the firefighters and farmers fought the fire for about four hours.
Schiefen says he wants to send big thanks to all the departments and all the farmers that helped put out the fire and cautions everyone to be careful and not throw lit cigarettes out of your vehicle.
Other weekend fire calls, which pale in comparison, included a field fire near Ireton on Sunday and a baler fire west of Orange City on Saturday.
