Groton Firemen have been busy the last couple of days answering fire calls. Dry conditions and high winds have resulted in increased fire risk.
• On Friday Groton was called in to assist the Conde Fire Department with a cornfield fire. The fire burned about 40 acres of picked and unpicked corn. It is suspected that the fire was caused by a combine harvesting the corn. It only took about an hour to control the fire and eliminate any threat. Besides Groton, firefighters from Conde, Stratford and Hutterville answered the fire call.
• As they were finishing mopping up and preparing to head home, a second fire call came in on a fire southwest of Groton.
• "It was a challenge going right from one fire to another," Groton Fire Chief Dion Bahr said.
• The second fire was a little tougher to handle, due to the high wind. The fire spread extremely quickly because of the wind and burned more than 100 acres of bean and corn stubble before it was brought under control about 2 a.m.
• According to the National Weather Service in Aberdeen, the sustained wind speed in Groton was about 24 mph, with gusts of wind up to 34 mph
• "I've been a member of the fire department for 12 years," Bahr said. "The only time I've seen a fire spread that quickly was the Jim River bottom fire 8-years-ago."
• No structures were damaged in the fire as firefighters managed to contain the fire before it jumped a road or reached the nearby slough.
• "If the fire had jumped the road," Bahr said. "It could have spread to the Taylor farm, which was about a quarter-mile away."
• Firefighters from both Groton stations assisted in fighting the fire along with the Warner and Stratford Fire Department.
• A third fire call happened just outside of Groton on Monday shortly after 4:30pm.
• "It wasn't much of a fire," Bahr said. "The Groton Police Department had it pretty well out by the time we responded. They were able to extinguish the fire with fire extinguishers."
• The fire started in the south ditch along U.S. Highway 12 across from Mike 'N Jo's Body 'N Glass and moved into the middle divide.
• "The fire was likely started by someone tossing a cigarette out their window," Bahr said.

• -Char Telkamp