Area fire departments called to Wednesday afternoon fires

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Fire Department was called to a grass and brush fire at a rural residence in the 1700 block of Shadow Avenue north of the city on Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 14.

Some of the department’s firefighters were already helping out with another rural fire, responding about an hour earlier to a call from the Ionia Fire Department to help provide water to combat a fire in an old corn crib.

The Floyd and Colwell fire departments also responded to the Shadow Avenue fire, which had burned much of a field and was still burning around the perimeter when firefighters arrived.

A neighbor said the property owner had called him and asked him to check on it because she couldn’t be home until later that day.

“Someone else called and said, ‘Hey, there’s a fire at your house.’ We were worried it was the house itself,” he said. “Thankfully it wasn’t.”

The Floyd and Colwell departments brought their smaller four-wheel drive trucks with front mounted sprayers, water tanks and pump-powered hoses to help fight the flames.

The Charles City Fire Department posted, “We are extremely lucky to have such a strong relationship with the surrounding departments and we all know we can count on each other when anyone is in need of assistance.”