We had a few nice days of warmth and sunshine, and one guy decided to do some burning early, while another set his wood stove ashes out and forgot about the wind when it came up. First call was on Landon Road, out near my parents, so I decided to forego a nap and drive out to see how bad it was…it was about a block from them and I stayed to shoot some photos for the local newspaper….guy was burning brush piles for his brother he told me, and it got away from him, luckily it stayed on his brother`s property….

 

…Dave Konys and his crew hit it pretty fast on arrival, with leaf blowers, which you can use quite effectively in grassy fields to blow the fire out….

 

 

 

 

 

…Dave had his hands full with the south side of the fire til Ray joined up with him on the east side….

 

 

I left shortly after and returned home to get a nap in….woke up a couple of hours later by a passing fire truck, Dave`s crew once again, responding to assist Bourbon Fire Department on a brush fire with a barn in danger of catching fire on Strothcamp Lane off Hwy AE. When I arrived behind Bourbon`s second pumper, I found several large round hay bales on fire and initial crews were out in the woods containing the sixty acres of natural cover fire. The farm owner, Norman Ruwwe, was assisting Bourbon`s crew with pulling the bales out away from the stack, with his tractor….

 

…and doing a very good job of it I might add….

 

…those things are very heavy and when they catch on fire, you have to be very careful in rolling them out, to either extinguish them with alot of water at your disposal, or simply letting them burn out on their own…either way, the danger is getting close to them to get them away from the stack…a tractor with a front end loader or hay spike is a good way of doing so safely, however the downside is one has to eat a lot of smoke…Mr Ruwwe pulled the first few out into the open where firefighters could get ahold of them and push them on out with their pike poles, and then they took over with their crews after he made it very easy for them to get into the stack and pull the others out……

 

 

 

 

Sullivan`s initial response was with a brush truck, pumper, and tanker….

 

Beaufort Leslie Fire District also responded with a brush truck and crew, and once Sullivan`s brush crew came out of the woods, everyone joined together to work on the bales….

 

 

 

 

…it`s much easier to let them burn up if you have a good burn area around them, as there was in this case, and all you have to do is help them burn by pulling off layers to get to the unburned hay as Eric is seen doing here….

 

 

 

…all in all, it was a good team effort by all those on the scene…after all, twelve large round bales is no easy feat, so everyone involved had a good workout….

 

 

…and even managed to create some art while fighting fire….