Saline County town recovers from Sunday’s wildfires

SWANTON, Neb. (KOLN) -This week, 10/11 NOW brought you stories of the wildfires in Lancaster and Gage counties. Now, we’re shedding light on the fire that hit a small town in Saline County.

The Swanton Volunteer fire chief, Lynn Strouf, said the fire they saw in Saline County was similar to those in Lancaster and Gage counties. The fire resulted from wind blowing tress around, that then made contact with an arcing power line that and spread due to dry conditions.

Strouf said there haven’t been any hotspots or rekindled fire since Monday afternoon, but said without rain or moisture there’s always risk for more wildfires.

Swanton, a town of 75 people, is located about 50 miles southwest of Lincoln. The volunteer fire department spent most of Sunday battling wildfires that burned around 700 acres of land.

“The conditions were right as far as the high winds low humidity at this perfect time,” Strouf said. “And it went wild from there.”

Strouf said the fire started around 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon. He said his volunteers, along with others from seven more departments and farmers worked to battle the flames into late Sunday night.

“It didn’t take much to get things started on the dry grass and and then there was it started right close to a road but it didn’t take nothing to jump the road and and got into the fields and went from there,” Strouf said.

Crews kept checking the burn scar to put out hot spots and prevent rekindled fires.

“With that strong wind it just seemed like things were really hard to get put out,” Strouf said.

Only one structure, a small barn, was destroyed along with some farm equipment.