Morning blaze destroys large shed, round bales of hay north of Dixon

DIXON – No one was injured Friday morning as firefighters from at least a dozen departments battled a fire in a farm storage shed just north of Dixon.

Dixon Rural Fire Chief Sid Aurand said the fire was reported to his department at 6:39 a.m.

“It’s a shop on one end and hay storage in the other,” Aurand said while at the scene at 9 a.m.

A long line of tanker trucks from area departments lined up along Illinois 2 at the intersection with Lost Nation Road to bring water in to fight the blaze. Crews from other departments, including Dixon City, were called to the scene. Many brought tanker trucks filled with gallons of water to fight the fire.

Two firefighters from Dixon City sprayed water on top of the metal building from the top of their aerial ladder of their tower truck as other firefighters surrounded the perimeter and unloaded water from tanker trucks into portable water tanks that had been assembled on the scene.

Tankers and portable water tanks are needed because rural fires do not have public water systems - fire hydrants - to pull water from.

Cody Hill of Dixon said his grandmother who lives in the farmhouse nearby the storage building was unharmed.

“She’s OK,” he said. “The hay bales have been in the building for about a month. There were probably between 120-150 bales in there.”

Farm machinery and the large round hay bales were destroyed in the 60-feet-by-80-feet metal building. The farm’s home, other outbuildings and livestock were not damaged by the fire, Aurand said.

Firefighters remained on scene until about noon as the large smoldering bales of hay stored in the back of the building continued to burn.

The stacked bales were pulled out of the shed with other farm equipment and spread out in a grassy area to the south of the shed.

Additional information as to what the cause of the fire may have been was not available.

It was the second fire in less than 24 hours that required area departments to respond. Numerous fire departments responded to a fire in the 6100 block of S. Lowell Park Road, north of Dixon at 10 p.m. Thursday evening for a fire in a two-story home.

Dixon Rural, along with at least four other area departments, assisted the Polo Fire Department in that incident.