Area firefighters spent a couple of hours Tuesday, March 7, battling a rapidly spreading brush fire that was threatening a mobile home community just outside De Soto. The saturated ground and dry tall grass caused problems for fire crews, said Deputy Chief John Scullin of the De Soto Rural Fire Protection District.
Firefighters were dispatched at 3:33 p.m. to investigate a fire around Flucom Road and Lemehl Drive near a mobile home community. While investigating, the first firefighter on the scene was told that the fire was in the 13,000 block of Hickman Road at the end of the street. The property owner had been burning brush at a farm, and the fire was moving toward the mobile home community, Scullin said.
He said firefighters encountered a perfect storm of problems. First, the ground was extremely wet from recent rains, which prevented firetrucks from getting to the head of the fire. While the ground was very wet, the tall grass was very dry, and the wind picked up just as the fire moved to the tall grass.
“The fire made its way across several fence lines with limited apparatus access, making it a tough one to get under control,” Scullin said. “The quick actions of the firefighters allowed them to stop the head of the fire from crossing into a mobile home community and endangering multiple structures.”
By 4 p.m., firefighters had stopped the fire from getting to the mobile home community. At 4:30 p.m., they requested a third-alarm to get additional personnel so firefighters could be rotated out. He said fighting the fire took a lot of manual labor because firefighters had to use leaf blowers and rakes to put out hot spots.
“It took a lot of foot and hand work,” he said. “We stretched a lot of hose lines to hit both sides of the field.”
Scullin estimated that about 4 or 5 acres burned.
He said the fire was out by about 5 p.m. and firefighters left the scene at 5:47 p.m.
The De Soto, Festus and Crystal City fire departments and the Hematite, Jefferson R-7, Hillsboro and Mapaville fire protection districts helped with the call, Scullin said.