4 fire departments respond to town of Otter Creek brush fire Saturday night
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Editor’s note: LeAnn R. Ralph serves as chair of the Town of Otter Creek
By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — The Colfax fire department responded to a brush fire in the Town of Otter Creek Saturday night and received mutual aid from three other fire departments: Boyceville, Menomonie and Ridgeland.
The call came in around 7:30 p.m. Saturday (April 12), said Don Logslett, former Colfax fire chief and the incident commander for the Saturday night fire.
Colfax Fire Chief Gary Hill said he had responded to the fire as well although he arrived after other firefighters were on scene.
The fire burned three or four acres of woods along 1180th Avenue, Logslett said.
In the Town of Otter Creek, 1180th Avenue is a dirt road running east of county Highway SS.
The fire started on the edge of the road, and there are no houses close by, Logslett said.
The fire was called in by a passerby who lives in that area of the township.
The origin of the fire is “suspicious” because there are no houses right in that area, although the fire was headed toward a house at the end of 1180th, Logslett said.
The Dunn County Sheriff’s Department also responded to the scene and has started an investigation, he said.
While Logslett considers the origin of the fire to be suspicious, he said it did not really seem to be the work of a “fire bug” and possibly could have been started by a lit cigarette tossed out the window of a vehicle.
The reason Logslett thinks it was not set intentionally by an arsonist is that the west end of the dirt road “was torn up … like someone was out there screwing around.”
The Town of Otter Creek has had quite a few instances of people out joy-riding and tearing up dirt roads, to the point where the patrolman is becoming frustrated with having to fix certain sections of roads multiple times throughout the summer. Sometimes the damage seems to be done by pickup trucks, while at other times, ATVs drivers are the likely culprits.
For a number of years, there have been suspicious fires in the Town of Otter Creek that have seemed to have been set intentionally, although so far, investigators have not turned up enough leads to charge someone with arson.
The woods where the fire was burning was thick, and fighting the fire was complicated by the fact that it was dark, Logslett said.
Fortunately no one tripped in the thick brush because a firefighter could have easily ended up with a broken ankle or other injuries, he said.
Colfax firefighters returned to the fire station around 11 p.m., but some of the firefighters had to go back to the scene an hour after that, Logslett said.
When firefighters returned, they discovered a tree was on fire and there were more hotspots to put out, he said.
After the second time firefighters returned to the scene, they went back to the fire station between 1:30 and 2 a.m., Logslett said.
The area where the fire was located is surrounded by thick woods, and if the fire had happened on a warm, sunny, windy day, the damage could have been much worse, he said.
“We were lucky it was at that time of night,” Logslett said, adding that nighttime humidity levels and the fact that the wind had died down helped firefighters to get the fire under control.
All together, between 20 and 25 firefighters worked to contain the fire, he said.
Lack of rain combined with quite a few windy days has put the area into a high fire danger, Logslett said, noting that he is surprised a burning ban has not been issued.
