Brady, Neb. — Several fire departments battled a rangeland fire on Tuesday approximately 10 miles south of Brady on Jeffrey Road. Brady Volunteer Fire Chief Mike Gruber says his department was paged at about 3:30 p.m. to the blaze, which unofficially burned up to 2,000 acres of mostly grazing land. Gruber says additional fire departments were paged for mutual aid…
“Its really rugged terrain and the area that was burning was part of the area that burned in 2002…part of it hadnt burned during that big fire…so we had a lot of heavy cedar growth…and we called in two planes which actually helped us out a lot because it was in such a rugged area that we couldnt even get trucks to part of the fire.”
Gruber says the fire started as a result of someone “doing some black lines prepping for a prescribed burn.”
Mutual aid was provided by fire departments from Maxwell, Stapleton, McPherson County, Wallace, Curtis, Gothenburg, Arnold, Sutherland, Hershey and others.
Airplanes, one from Broken Bow and one from Kearney, were also brought to the scene to provide valuable assistance. North Platte Airport also assisted, allowing the airplanes to land.
Gruber says the last units left the fire scene about 11 p.m. Gruber says the fire is out, but his department planned to go around the perimeter of the burned area Wednesday morning to make sure everything is contained.
Gruber says the fire was very challenging because of rugged terrain and the dry conditions.
