By MADELINE REIDA

Staff writer

Firefighters standing at a distance from a blaze with their coats open are unusual, but the sight is understandable with a hay barn fire in August heat.

“We try to rotate them out a lot quicker, get them out and get them back in,” Lincolnville fire chief Lester Kaiser said after a fire last Wednesday evening east of Lincolnville. “With the heat index as high as it was, we allowed them to keep their coats open if they are far enough away,”

The fire on 290th Rd. east of Lincolnville was battled for three hours by firefighters from Marion, Lost Springs, Lincolnville, and Tampa.

“It was at a point where they were able to manage it,” Kaiser said about turning the scene over to property owners Ronnie and Susan Carlson at 8 p.m.

Rotating firefighters and maintaining a drinking water brigade kept crews going until then.

The cause of the fire is undetermined, but Kaiser said it was not the hay itself. Six hundred hay bales were destroyed, and the metal siding collapsed. A wind kept the fire away from other structures.