Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
VOLUNTEER FIREMEN Justin Smith, left, from Kimball, and Matt Luoma, from Saxon, walk along U.S. 2 searching for any remaining hot spots after crews extinguished a grass fire Tuesday.
By Bryan Hellios
KIMBALL - Roughly 2 miles of ditch line west of Valley Road along U.S. 2 was left charred after a grass fire Tuesday afternoon.
Paul Samardich, Iron County Sheriff, happened to be close by and said he was the first to respond.
"It was pretty active when I first arrived on the scene," he said.
The Kimball, Saxon and Hurley Fire Departments and the Department of Natural Resources foresters responded to the blaze.
Montreal was paged, but Samardich said they were called off before they responded.
Kelly Martinko, DNR forest ranger out of Mercer, responded with a bulldozer and another firefighter.
The dozer was not needed and she said a lot of green grass helped keep the fire from spreading quickly.
"If it had been two weeks ago, when this was still all brown," she said. "It could have been a lot different."
A few of the pine trees along the edge of the treeline underwent some "torching," but she gave credit to the fire crews for stopping the fire.
"Our fire departments did an excellent job when they got here ordering resources and doing what they were trained to do," Martinko said.
