IVFD controls pair of grass fires despite fire danger warnings

The Imperial Volunteer Fire Department (IVFD) responded to two grass fires in the past week.
One fire on Oct. 13 around 1:19 p.m. was near Tom Luhrs’ seed plant near Enders.
“It looked like they were burning some trash and it got away from them,” IVFD 2nd Lt. Rick Elliott said. The fire then got into some equipment, but there was “really not a whole lot of damage to report.”
Another call was to a grass fire near a home in Enders on Oct. 16 at 1:56 p.m.
When IVFD arrived, the homeowner was using her hose to help dowse the fire.
“She was doing a great job,” IVFD Chief Doug Mitchell said.
“She got pretty lucky,” he added. The home was on the southwest corner of Enders and owned by Alvin and Kaye Einspahr.
“If it would have gone down her little road to the house it would have really turned into something big,” he said.
Mitchell said some shrubs and other plants were burned, but nothing significant.
He added that Kaye had burned some trash in her trash can earlier that morning “and that’s probably where it started from.”
He said the department was also lucky that day because the wind wasn’t blowing.
With high winds and low humidity the past few days, Mitchell said, the area has been in an almost constant state of fire hazard.
“Whenever the humidity gets down to 10-15% and we get these winds of up to 40 mph, that’s when they put us in  high fire danger,” he said.
“The past two or three days we were put in pretty high fire danger and we’ve been very fortunate that everybody’s been doing great,” Mitchell added. “But we’re not out of the woods yet.”