Fires inspire warning

By Dan Nienaber
The Free Press

NORTH MANKATO April 22, 2009 08:25 pm

— A grass fire that was possibly started by a spark or discarded cigarette from a vehicle on Highway 14 had Laurie Thro worried, at least for a bit, that her North Mankato house could be in danger.
Around the same time Wednesday, Ozzie Chabot watched as the building that housed his business, Lakeland Industrial Chemicals, was brought down by a blaze.
Both incidents have area firefighters warning people to be careful where the ground is dry, which is pretty much everywhere right now.
“The saying the Department of Natural Resources has is, “If it’s not green or white, don’t light,’” North Mankato Fire Chief Tim Pohlman said. “Unless the ground is really greened up, people need to be careful when they’re burning.”
Pohlman and 26 other firefighters were dispatched to fight the grass fire off Highway 14 at about noon Wednesday. They were able to stop fire before it worked its way through a woods and up the bluff to the houses on Howard Drive above.
“We were lucky we got there when we did because it could have been a lot worse,” Pohlman said. “The wind was really whipping things around.”
Three lanes of traffic were cut down to one on Highway 14. The off ramp to Lor Ray Drive was closed temporarily so the first tanker trucks could drive the wrong way down the ramp to get water to the fire quickly.
Thro, who lives in a Howard Drive house directly above where the fire started, just happened to be home when firefighters arrived. She was having furniture delivered at the same time the firetrucks arrived.
Her neighbor Rich Inman is the assistant fire chief. He had crews hook up to a hydrant in front of Thro’s house and run a very long hose down the bluff. That way they were able to fight the fire from both sides.
“I didn’t even know anything was happening until I saw (Inman) walking in my backyard,” Thro said. “Anytime a fire starts coming toward your house, you get worried,” she said.
Firefighters were on scene for about three hours.
As they were doing their work, a dark plume of smoke rose above Chabot’s work building off Allen Street in Kasota. He was burning some bags outside the building. Those bags started some leaves on fire and the fire spread into the building, where he mixes chemicals to manufacture cleaning products for paint.
He saw the smoke and got out before the fire spread to the building and ignited some used oil, gas cans and the propane tanks he uses for a forklift.
His neighbor Jane Kraus had just returned from work and was making her noon tea when the fire started.
“I didn’t notice anything until I saw Ozzie running for the house,” Kraus said. “I never see Ozzie moving that fast. The smoke had already started and it was black, and I could hear explosions as the fire went on.”
Firefighters from both Kasota and St. Peter responded to that fire, which returned to a full blaze a couple of times as they fought it. Each time the fire grew, another plume of smoke rose into the air.
Chabot’s daughter-in-law, Linda Chabot, was working at Whiskey River in St. Peter when a mailman told her there was a fire near Ozzie’s house. She decided she better leave and check on him after hearing there had been explosions.
“He was the only thing I was worried about,” she said. “Him and the neighbors because they’re like family to us, too.”

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.