Two Nebraska volunteer fire chiefs recall first days of Cottonwood Fire response

In the first few days of response as the Cottonwood Fire burned across Dawson and Lincoln Counties, volunteer firefighters were on the frontlines.

As of Wednesday morning, the fire had burned just over 131,000 acres and was 40% contained. It is the second-largest fire in Nebraska’s history – bested only by the Morrill fire, which is currently raging across five counties and has burned more than 640,000 acres.

Lexington Volunteer Rural Fire Department Chief Bo Berry said his department was called to assist last week on Thursday evening after flames first broke out near Maxwell and Brady in Lincoln County. On the first evening, his crew worked near Cozad for more than 12 hours. On Friday, they spent another 12 hours assisting the Gothenburg Fire Department.

By Saturday, they instituted 12-hour shifts to rotate out personnel at all hours. Berry said the conditions were “extremely intense,” especially near Maxwell.

“The Eastern Red Cedar is kind of an invasive tree in those areas, and if they’re not managed correctly, they reproduce and grow extremely quick,” he said. “That tree is filled with sap, and as the fire comes up to it, it superheats the tree, and that sap then boils out and is flammable. So then it explodes, shooting embers into the air and lighting the next canyon. It’s just a repeat process.”

After finishing a shift on Sunday evening, the Lexington crew has had a few days off. The Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team, a federal interagency task force, took over command of the Cottonwood and Morrill fires on Saturday. Berry said his team will have some time to rest until they are called again to finish the effort.

“We’re just kind of waiting right now to see how things go,” Berry said. “As these fires get big, they start to reach out farther for outside resources to come help so the local guys can go home and rest. When the farther away guys get done, they revert back to the local guys.”

The town of Indianola sits about 60 miles southwest of Lexington and is home to just over 500 people. Its volunteer fire department, headed by Nathan Herrman, is staffed with 30 volunteers. Sixteen of them responded to the Cottonwood Fire starting on Thursday afternoon.

“Throughout the fire, we were [working] between 20-24 hours a day, two to three trucks, depending on the day and time,” Herrman said. “We were running constantly.”

Herrman said local landowners assisted in the firefighting effort by bringing tractors and water tankers to protect their land and their neighbors.

“One of the best ways to knock down fire, or make sure fire isn’t going to spread, is to disc burnable ground,” Hermann said, referring to the process of using a tractor with a disc attachment to make a fire break. “That really made a difference, I believe it was Sunday – there was a spot of the fire that popped up, and once they got tractors there, they really helped get ahead of it.”

Indianola’s last crew wrapped up shortly before midnight on Sunday.

How to help

During the fire, Herrman said, there are lots of immediate needs for firefighters – bottled water, hydration packets, non-medicated eye drops, hand warmers.

Many departments have seen an outpouring of support and donations since the fires began. On Tuesday, the Lexington firehouse was filled with cases of bottled water and snacks. Home Depot donated a giant box of rakes and shovels. They received so many donations that they began allocating them to smaller nearby firehouses.

“The outpouring from our community – from the state – has been tremendous,” Berry said. “We’ve received calls from Omaha of people wanting to drive out today, yesterday, the day before, offering to bring us anything we need.”

Herrman said it’s just as important to follow up with local departments after the fire dies down to see what they might need to help fight the next fire. Both Herrman and Berry said their rigs go through a lot of stress in the intense conditions.

“The air filters, the cabin filters, get extremely dirty and have to be replaced over time,” Berry said. “We broke a back window on one. We had a fitting fail on one of our hose reels through excessive use and nature.”

Monetary donations to volunteer fire stations can help them cover the costs of oil and filter changes and other vehicle maintenance.

Herrman said it’s important to call your local firehouse before donating to see what kind of items they need. While his small station has a supply of full-face respirator masks, he said some other volunteer departments were relying on hospital masks or wet bandanas to keep out the smoke. Those masks are a critical need at some smaller stations.

“Ten or twenty dollar donations to your local department can help them buy those face masks like we have, and it would really help those other departments a lot,” he said.