Area volunteer fire departments helped each other last week extinguish two hay bale fires.
Firefighters were first dispatched at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 20, to the Morris Fick farm southwest of Luverne in Luverne Township.
Hills and Beaver Creek fire departments provided mutual aid.
According to Luverne fire chief David Van Batavia, about 100 to 120 large round bales were lost in the June 20 blaze.
Crews spent more than four hours at the scene and used more than 60,000 gallons of water.
Van Batavia said people working around the farm did not notice smoke rising from the bales to signal overheating was occurring until the fire began.
The hay was baled last year, and Van Batavia speculated that the area’s sixth-tenths inch of rain penetrated their surface, causing the insides to heat and create a fire.
The Hills Fire Department responded to a second call at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 21, at a bale fire at the Alan Baker farm east of Steen in Clinton Township.
Hills fire chief Jared Rozeboom said about 100 stacked large round bales were on fire.
Departments from Luverne, Beaver Creek and Rock Rapids, Iowa, transported an estimated 65,000 gallons of water to prevent the blaze from spreading to a nearby silage pile and additional round bales stacked nearby.
Crews spent four to five hours at the scene.
At both fires, crews broke apart the bales in order to extinguish the flames.
Rozeboom said combustion within bales is hard to detect and can happen depending on moisture content of the hay and how the bales are stacked.
He said the origin of the Baker fire is undetermined.