Hay Bale Fire
On Saturday, 04/29, at around 1330 hours, the MFD was paged to a hay wagon on fire in St. Lawrence, a town about 2 miles away from Miller. We responded with two brush trucks, one engine, and about eight firefighters.
Apparently, a tire on the hay wagon was rubbing on the hay wagon frame. The heat ignited the hay bales in the wagon - eight large, round bales. The hay was fully involved when we arrived. The owner had disconnected their pickup from the wagon and left the wagon on a narrow road.
We had the owner pull the wagon into their corral and then tip over the wagon so that we could spread the hay bales out. You would think that hay bales would burn up quickly, but they are so compacted that they will burn for several hours unless you pull them apart so that the air and heat can get to the interior of the bale.
Usually, with a hay bale fire, there are so many bales, that we end up digging a hole and burying the hay bales instead of burning them up. Burning them up would just take too long and require a ton of effort.
In this case, we only had eight bales, so we thought we would go ahead and burn them up. We had the owner use his tractor to spread the bales out and we used pitchforks to pull apart the bales. Everything was going great until...it started to rain! Not just a sprinkle either, but it rained hard for 10 minutes. So much for burning up the hay bales.
The rain didn't put the bales out completely, but we weren't going to be able to finish what we started. The owner agreed to keep an eye on things and we headed back to the fire hall. We were back in service by around 1530.
