Fire Truck Breaks Frame in Half Responding to Grass Fire
Fire Truck Breaks Frame in Half Responding to Grass Fire
10 April 2009
published by www.ksallink.com
USA — That haze in the air Wednesday wasn’t fog. There were an unusually large amount of controlled burns in Kansas.
Smoke from Wednesday’s controlled burns drove Wichita’s air quality to its worst level in nine years. Officials say the city’s air quality exceeded federal levels by 30 percent. The same day, the fire department issued more than 100 burn permits in Sedgwick County alone.
Locally rural firefighters in Saline, Dickinson, Ellsworth, and Lincoln Counties battled several large grass fires, some of which were controlled burns that gor out of control.
A Kanopolis fire truck responding to one of the fires blew a front tire, went into a ditch, and broke its frame in half. The truck was disabled, but no one was hurt in the crash.
There was one person killed in a grass fire in South Central Kansas, though. Winfield Fire Chief Curtis Wilson says two men were burning off a field near Dexter on Wednesday when the flames got out of control. The men drove away, but the fire overtook their pickup truck.
A Kanopolis fire truck responding to a grass fire blew a front tire, went into a ditch,
and broke its frame in half. No one was hurt. photo courtesy Henry Diehl