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Thursday, October 3, 2024

Northwest Iowa under red flag warning with concerns about harvest fires

Northwest Iowa under red flag warning with concerns about harvest fires

Sixteen Iowa counties are under a burn ban, and forecasters say there’s a high to extreme risk for wildfires this afternoon, given temperatures well above average, dry conditions, and gusting winds.

Le Mars fire chief Dave Schipper requested the burn ban in Plymouth County. “Hopefully that will get everybody to not do any controlled burns or burning and we can concentrate on the accidental fires we are having with the harvest right now,” he says. Schipper says they have answered several calls in the last few days for grass and field fires.

He advises farmers to take special precautions to keep their machines from creating a fire. “The best thing they can do is keep their equipment clean, have a disc hooked up and ready to go in case they would have a fire,” Schipper says. “We also advise them to have a couple of fire extinguishers available so that they can maybe try to slow something down or get it out prior to a fire department’s arrival because it’s usually sometimes several miles for us to travel to get to the fires in these fields or these combines and machinery.”

The National Weather Service says some two dozen northwest Iowa counties are under a Red Flag Warning until 7 tonight. That means weather conditions make the fire danger very high.

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