Firefighters from 5 counties battle Fayette County brush fire
Grindstone VFD
Firefighters from five counties spent numerous hours battling a brush fire in Fayette County Saturday that destroyed between 30 and 50 acres of land and resulted in three firefighters suffering injuries.
Grindstone Fire Chief Rich Lenk said the call came in shortly before noon for the blaze at Lynn Bottom Road, better known as Sherbondy Hollow, in Jefferson Township.
“Somebody had to light it, there was no burning down here,” said Lenk Sunday morning while surveying the scene with the state police fire marshal. Someone came by and lit it.”
Lenk said as soon as the call came in for the location of the fire he knew of the danger of the situation made even a bit more treacherous by the winds that were prevalent in Western Pennsylvania Saturday.
“When we heard where it was, we said ‘Oh no’,” Lenk said, adding that a brush fire can spread quickly. “There’s the wind, the dry leaves. It’s a straight up embankment for maybe half a mile. We built a fire line around it. Then the wind came back pretty hard and we had to build another one. We were up at Touch a Truck at Tractor Supply in Brownsville when the call came in. I put the all-call out. We had fire companies from five counties. We were probably there until 10 p.m.”
Fire companies from Fayette, Washington, Greene, Allegheny and Westmoreland Counties responded.
Lenk said firefighters probably were going to have to return to the scene Sunday afternoon because the wind was picking up again and some trees still were burning.
“There were a lot of trees damaged,” Lenk said.
Three firefighters who responded did suffer injuries, two from the Morrell Volunteer Fire Department in Dunbar and one from Bentleyville.
“Morrell rolled over its side-by-side,” Lenk said. “We needed a side-by-side to come in with water and we needed the extra brush trucks with water to get back into where we were.They came down one of the paths. I’m not sure what happened, but (the three firefighters) all went to the hospital.”
Lenk was not aware of their condition as of Sunday morning.
No major traffic had to be impeded as a result of the fire.
Lenk was extremely grateful to the many firefighters that responded to the blaze.
“We might have had about 60 fire departments here,” he said. “The forestry department came out and gave us a hand also. It’s a shame somebody had to get hurt over this. Somebody came down here and lit this on fire.”