A barn at the John McPhail farm on Adams Avenue in rural Lisbon was damaged in a fire Tuesday, Dec. 27.
According to Lisbon Fire Department’s assistant chief Brett Epperly, the department received the page of a fire at 1:45 p.m. and were on scene roughly four minutes later with an initial crew of seven.
As they started battling the blaze, there was concern that the structure fire might spread to an adjacent garage, and a call for additional help from other departments was made.
Crews from Mount Vernon Fire Department, Mechanicsville Fire Department and additional firefighters from Lisbon Fire Department answered.
“Especially when we’re dealing with fire in a rural area, it’s always advised to get more help, to help us run and get more water to help fight the fire,” Epperly said.
The department used a fill point near Seeds of Faith Lutheran Church to refill tankers during the fire.
Epperly said the crews were able to knock the fire down extremely fast, and the additional crews’ assistance helped keep the fire away from an adjacent garage.
Firefighters worked to remove some hay bales, using one of McPhail’s tractors to get access to some of the larger bales and remove them from the barn. Lisbon public works director Travis Bagby also assisted with his personal skidloader.
“There were some larger hay bales towards the back corner that we were worried it would spread to,” Epperly said.
There were no people injured in the blaze, but the barn was a total loss.
The crews were on scene until roughly 3:30 p.m. Cedar County Secondary Road provided additional assistance with salt and sand after the blaze, to help mitigate some of the water left on scene.
While temperatures were south of freezing, the department did not have any freezing hoses to deal with, unlike a Christmas Eve fire in Mechanicsville they aided.
“One of the things we do when we’re fighting a fire in freezing temperatures is leave the nozzles open a bit, because water in motion doesn’t tend to freeze,” Epperly said.
Linn County Sheriff’s Office, Cedar County Sheriff’s Office, Mechanicsville Ambulance, Mount Vernon-Lisbon Police Department and Lisbon-Mount Vernon Ambulance Service responded to the scene.
“One of the things our community is really lucky is we have multiple fire departments who train and work together to respond to fires, and we just work well together,” Epperly said.
Multiple agencies responded to the barn fire, including Lisbon Fire, Mount Vernon Fire, Mechanicsville Fire, Lisbon-Mount Vernon Ambulance, Mount Vernon-Lisbon police, Linn County Sheriff, Cedar County Sheriff and Cedar County Secondary road crew.