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Hot day in hay field

Smoking swather bursts into flames

On Wednesday, Jul. 26, Mark Humphries fought fire to save his field and potentially his neighbours’ crops, while waiting for Wallace District Fire Department to get to put out the blaze of his burning swather. 

He was swathing hay in a field near Kola when he smelled smoke.

 “It was so quick. We were cutting, with about three acres left to cut. It was all working fine, no indication whatsoever, nothing running warm or overheating... everything was just behaving itself and then, I smelled smoke and I thought, ‘which idiot’s burning on a day like this?’”

Humphries was thinking whoever it was should be reported for that, keeping his eye out for where the smoke was coming from. “Then I realized the smoke was coming from me.”

With no water, no sloughs anywhere to drive the smoking machine into, the farmer realized he had to get out of the field.

He was heading out off the hay field, making phone calls as he drove as the cab filled with smoke. He parked and ran to his van where he had a fire extinguisher. By the time he returned to the swather, it was fully in flames.

Humphries was by Adam Bajus’ yard. Bajus joined him with his own fire extinguishers as well and the men were able to stop the immediate spread of the fire in the surrounding vegetation.

Don’t hesitate. Call 911 immediately; Fire Chief Brad Yochim

“The fire brigade was there shortly and put it (the swather) out for us. We were very appreciative.”

Humphries just had just serviced the machine, including having the  hay header fixed. He hopes insurance will replace the machine and all the recent spending to fix it up.

With a canola field beside the hay land and two oil batteries nearby, Humphries says he is very relieved not to have started a Manitoba wildfire.

It was dead calm that afternoon in the blistering heat, in a dry stand of hay, but with no indication of any jams or bad bearings, there’s no certain reason for the fire. “There was no warning sign, everything was running perfectly... running like a Swiss watch.”

Fire Chief Brad Yochim is concerned with the extreme dryness throughout the area.

“Mark hesitated in calling 911, but we got lucky - it didn’t take-off in the field,” said Yochim. He cautions that with the very dry conditions, fire can quickly get away.

“A good message would be, ‘Don’t hesitate. Call 911 immediately."

All that is left of Mark Humphries’ self-propelled swather as it sits in his hayfield near Kola, the result of a fire on Wednesday, Jul. 26, that WDFD attended to extinguish.

 

Mark Humphries’ baler ablaze at the edge of a hayfield he was cutting.

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