A fire on the 2nd Line north of Fergus destroyed 120 large round straw bales on Aug. 10.
The call came in at 8:45pm, according to Centre Wellington Fire Rescue Services deputy fire chief Jonathan Karn.
“Initially the Fergus station responded and then we had the Elora station come out with a tanker for water, as well as a pumper for manpower,” Karn said, adding there were 16 firefighters on scene in total.
The straw was baled a few days prior to the fire and the bales were in a cluster in a field, close to the road. A family driving by noticed the ends of the bales were on fire and called the fire department.
“It went very quickly,” Karn said. “All the bales were on fire when we arrived.
“It didn’t take long for it to extend to all the bales.”
And because of the dry conditions, Karn said, “It was a fairly large fire, right next to the road.”
The 2nd Line was closed between Wellington Road 19 and Sideroad 15 by the OPP and the Centre Wellington public works department.
Karn said the goal for firefighters was to prevent the fire from spreading further.
“There was a little bit of fire spread into the field,” he said.
“We made sure that didn’t continue to happen.
“As well, the bales were lined up along the ditch and there were several trees along the ditch as well, so our goal was to not have all the trees catch fire.”
One of the biggest challenges with bale fires, Karn said, is gaining access to the centre of the bale to ensure the entire fire is extinguished.
At this fire, Karn said the property owner and a neighbour each drove a tractor to the scene and helped pull apart bales as firefighters doused them with water.
“They’re so tightly packed that really, the hardest part is breaking them apart and getting that fire put out,” Karn said. “It’s really deep-seated fire and you have to pull it all apart.
“If we didn’t have the tractors there we would have been on scene for a long, long time trying to pull it apart by hand.”
There were no reported injuries or structures damaged. However, Karn said the fire was a $5,000 loss for the property owner in the value of the straw bales.
“It’s not something he could redo again in, you know, a month,” Karn said. “It’s not like hay where you can get two or three cuts off a field.
“It was a one-time (thing).”
While the cause of the fire is unknown, Karn said everyone should be aware of how they’re discarding smoking materials.
“I’m not saying that was the cause, but in general we’ve seen fires … that start in ditches along the roads … and the presumed cause of things like that is the discarding of say smoking materials, so cigarette butts and stuff,” he said.
“The fields are dry and the ditches are dry.
“And one lit cigarette that’s tossed out or one cigarette butt that’s tossed out of a window by a car driving by can start grass fires.”
