Electric heat lamp likely cause of rural fire

    The observance of Good Friday was interrupted last week when the Imperial Volunteer Fire Department responded to a rural fire about 4 p.m.
    While the home of Loren and Vicky Fine along Road 335A was not threatened, a small out building not far from their home was totally lost.
    Also burned were three goats inside the small enclosure and one to two acres of grass, said Fire Chief Doug Mitchell.
    An electric heat lamp inside the building, placed there when temperatures dipped to the teens, was likely the cause of the fire, Mitchell said.
    They are unsure whether the lamp was knocked down by the goats or if it was too close to the hay inside, but the fire started from the lamp, he said.
    From there, winds out of the north pushed the fire into the grass to the south, spreading close to where the river had run.
    The Fines’ home sits north of the out building. Mitchell said it was lucky the wind wasn’t out of the south that afternoon.
    “The guys did a great job knocking the fire down before it got to where the river is,” he said.
    It would have been “a different deal,” Mitchell said, if it had burned further south and into a lot of trees along the river bed.
    Nineteen firefighters responded to the scene in eight IVFD trucks and quick-attacks, Mitchell said.
    They were on scene about an hour and a half.