O’Brien County Iowa — The Primghar and Hartley fire departments responded to a couple of recent field fires.
Primghar Fire Chief Gary Lansink says the Primghar firefighters were paged to 390th Street and Roosevelt Avenue for field fire about a quarter after five on Friday evening.
He says the cause is undetermined. A semi had been parked there before the fire, but he thinks it’s not too likely that was the issue. He says the fire only burned about an acre of combined cornstalks. He says the wind was blowing it toward standing corn, but they were able put it out with the help of water and a farmer with a disk in about 30 minutes.
**************************
Hartley Fire Chief Brad Meendering tells us they responded to the call of a field fire on Sunday, October 2nd just after 6:30 p.m. on 390th Street between Vine and Warbler avenues.
He says they arrived to find bean stubble on fire, which they put out with water. He says something hot on a combine must have started it. He tells us the combine was starting on fire too, but they cleaned it out and averted that crisis at least. He says the cause of the fire was probably something hot on the combine that left burning embers in the field as it moved. Firefighters were there for about 30 minutes.
