By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

County firefighters were kept unusually busy during this past week fighting blazes in dry conditions and high winds.

In all, they battled 24 fires through the week, with no fires reported only one day.

Many of the fires had rekindled after controlled burns.

Four were at city burn pits — three of the four in two days.

On Thursday, Goessel city employees pushed together brush that had been burned in the burn pit weeks before. The fire rekindled at 12:09 p.m., and Goessel firefighters spent an hour putting it out.

Soon thereafter, Marion firefighters extinguished hot spots at Marion’s tree dump and then were summoned back half an hour later for flames along a river bank. Smoke rose from Marion’s tree dump again Monday and firefighters doused it again.

Hillsboro firefighters, headed to a fire on 180th Rd. Friday, noticed smoke from the Hillsboro tree dump and spent half an hour putting out flames there.

Burns firefighters spent more than four hours Friday battling a large grass fire in Butler County.

County emergency manager Marcy Hostetler was proud of firefighters’ work.

“They did a really good job of keeping in contained,” she told county commissioners Monday.

She said fires on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday rekindled from earlier controlled burns.

Fires broke out at:

March 28

4:36 p.m. in the 600 block of E. Main St. in Goessel; 6:01 p.m. at 50th and Quail Creek Rds.; and 8:36 p.m. in the 600 block of E. Main St., Goessel for an apparently rekindled fire that the landowner denied starting. The fire in a hay field was extinguished within 30 minutes.

Thursday

12:09 p.m. at Goessel’s burn site; 1:24 p.m. at Marion’s tree dump; 1:29 p.m. near 180th and Pawnee Rds.; 2 p.m. at the river bank at the tree dump; 2:36 p.m. along railroad tracks north of 340th and Upland Rds., and 6:17 p.m. along Falcon Rd. north of 170th Rd.

Friday

12:43 p.m. at 180th Rd. west of Quail Creek Rd.; 12:54 p.m. at the Hillsboro tree dump; 1 p.m. in Butler County; 1:59 p.m. near 300th and Upland Rds.; 2:41 p.m. near 210th and Limestone Rds.; and 3:59 p.m. at 70th Rd. east of K-15.

Saturday

7:16 a.m. in a ditch at 270th and Bluestem Rds.; and 4:19 p.m. along the Cottonwood River near Pawnee and 190th Rds.

Sunday

12:06 a.m. along Remington Rd. south of 170th Rd.; 10:19 a.m. near 190th at Pawnee Rds.; 11:43 a.m. along US-56/77 near 220th Rd.; 12:25 p.m. south of Tampa on Limestone Rd.; 5:15 p.m. in the 300 block of N. Adams St. in Hillsboro; and 7:23 p.m. near 160th and Sunflower Rds.

Monday

4:25 p.m. near 160th and Sunflower Rds. plus smoke rising from Marion’s tree dump; and 10:07 p.m., south of 160th and Quail Creek Rds.