Firefighters needed so much water to battle a huge grain elevator blaze that they had to ask the whole town to go without — even canceling school to conserve the water supply, officials said.
The cause of the fire isn’t yet known; a fire marshal began an investigation. It took firefighters responding from 17 communities about eight hours to extinguish the blaze in the town of about 2,200 people, which was reported about 11 p.m. Sunday, said Hawley City Administrator Lonnie Neuner. No injuries were reported.
Firefighters even used water from the local golf course because the town’s water tower couldn’t keep up, Neuner said. Their ladder hoses each use about 600 gallons a minute, about as much as Hawley’s system can pump, Neuner said. He expected the city would allow water usage to resume “pretty soon.”
Unless it’s just much harder to utilize, I feel like the golf course should have been tapped first. No one needs golf.
If they were equal access absolutely.
Mains water, however, is accessible everywhere and ready to go while the golf course probably needed pumps placed to extract, or longer travel and downtime.
the town had an elevator which implies that they have the ability to go to farms without water (the well for drinking doesn’t count for fires). I would expect this to include the ability to pump from the nearest lake to whatever farm they are called to (most of mn is not more than a long walk to a lake - but I don’t know where this town is)
A grain elevator “elevates” grain to the top of the grain silo it has nothing to do with water.
The grain comes from farms.
What does that mean??
Fire departments who serve farms can get water from a lake instead of having to go all the way back to town. If you are in the city they will use fire hydrants but if not they have water trucks that refill at the nearest pond.
the grain elevator implies there are farms around so they would have this equipment.
Normally farms don’t have large pools of water and may only have enough pumping ability to supply their meager farm needs. They would at that rate be better off putting pumpers near a stream or other natural water source. Farms are rarely capable of supplying the amount of water needed for only 1 truck.
This is minnesota where lakes and ponds are everywhere.
The farms get drinking water from a well thet could not supply a fire truck. The ponds are still there and so fire trucks use them.
I’m betting that they used water from a pond on the local golf course, which requires trucks and pumps to draw from. Asking residents to stop using water keeps it available at the hydrants, which are considerably easier to access.
Good guess. The golf course isn’t doing any irrigation in February.
Nah. Let the kids go without school first, then the people without showers. Then, if we have to, I guess we could give up golf.
/s if it wasn’t obvious.
I feel like a chopper with a bucket attachment would have been better than sending in trucks.
Letting it burn down would be best, it’s going to be torn down and destroyed anyway if it was that hard to put out.
Edit: not sure I empathize with those downvoting me, I dont see a world where a private business’s asset, which is covered by insurance, is worth the health and safety of an entire community for any length of time.
Sorry Helen, we can’t run your dialasys machine because it would inconvenience Mr. Landowner. Sorry Martha, I know you’ve just been in a lab accident and your skin is melting off, but we need the emergency shower water for Mr. Businessman so that he thinks we’re doing work instead of caring about our community.
Agreed. Just dig a trench around it instead of making an entire town go without water.
Yeah, at some point you declare it a loss and just keep the surroundings hosed down so they don’t catch fire, and let the main fire burn itself out.
That far out, the golf course was probably on an independent grey-water system and not the main grid. Probably had tankers pulling it straight from the wells and driving it to the site of the fire.