Damage held to a minimum, from Gage County Fires

BEATRICE – Area firefighters, farmers and law officers spent Thursday battling wildfires across Gage County, finally wrapping up work at about 9:30 p.m.

Beatrice Rural Fire Chief Matt Langley says it brought back memories of fires that raced across the county in 2024. A fire that began off West Hickory Road at around 1:30 p.m., started in nearly the same location of a major fire two years ago.

"Probably the largest one that I'm aware of, on Hickory Road spreading two miles north. It had a pretty big fan, east and west. We also had another one on Southwest 117th and Scott. That was contained to about a mile, but that covered a lot of acres, width-wise."

Winds from the southwest were fanning the flames yesterday, with speeds gusting up to 50-miles-per-hour. The wind direction switched to the northwest later in the evening. The blaze north of Beatrice jumped U.S. Highway 77 between Hickory and Elm Roads…narrowly missing a Case International farm equipment dealership.

"It did go kind of right up to one of their buildings. We had a lot of mutual aid out there...a lot of communication. We were able to keep it away from those buildings. They did have a little bit of equipment loss...I think we had some debris that blew across the highway and caught a couple of headers on fire. When we saw that had caught on fire, we quickly had some trucks on that, to contain that to keep it from spreading to the rest of the equipment. We were able to get that out, relatively quickly. Another threat that we were trying to monitor very closely...there was a lot of campers on the back side of the truck stop. We were very concerned about those. Obviously everything was evacuated, but we did a lot of protection on that...and walked the grass on the back side of that, to keep the fire away from those campers."

No rural homes or farm buildings were damaged in Thursday’s Gage County Fires….something Langley said was “very fortunate”.

"There was a lot of threats. We evacuated several homes, Gage County Equipment and the truck stop...and those campers. Besides the little bit of farm equipment at Case-IH....there obviously was some fence that was destroyed. To my knowledge, there wasn't any structures that were damaged and no injuries. There wasn't any damage to any equipment on the fire departments. What we were dealing with, with a rapidly advancing fire....it was truly a good outcome."

Langley estimated around twelve firefighting, law enforcement agencies and the National Park Service were involved in the incidents Thursday afternoon and evening. Firefighters were aided by several farmers using tractors and discs, road grader operators and private companies offering water tenders. 

The National Weather Service labeled Thursday as a Red Flag Warning day, due to ongoing dry conditions, low humidity and very strong winds.

Rainfall and snow have been in very short supply over the winter season.

"I got a pond here, a half-mile from me...we're going on year number three with that sucker not having a drop of water in it, hardly. I'm willing to see that thing fill up, any time."

For firefighters, Langley says it’s all about preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

The National Weather Service forecasts winter-like weather for areas of Nebraska through the weekend…with temperatures warming into the 60s and 70s, by the middle of the coming week.