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Show Delta Firemen Have Five Calls Over Weekend Five fires in 48 hours kept the Delta Volunteer fire department busy over the weekend. The siren sounded Friday about 6 p. m., Saturday around 2 p. m. and on Sunday at 4 p. m., 4:05 p. m., and again at 7p. m.. Friday the firemen were summoned sum-moned to what was reported to be a house on fire in Hinckley. A Hinckley woman turned in the alarm, after seeing smoke billowing billow-ing above a home a few blocks distant. Imagine her chargrin when the fire department rushed in, the flames proved to be a weed fire in a distant field. Saturday the fire was at the Service Cleaners, where 7 pairs of mechanics' overalls caught afire while in the tumbler, possibly from a match in a pocket. There was no explosion, or the automatic safety device would have turned on steam and shut it off. Considerable Consider-able damage was done to the inside in-side of the machine, which was burnt and will have to be refin-ished. refin-ished. THREE SUNDAY ALARMS Sunday was a particularly busy day, with a howling wind sweeping sweep-ing northward. As Saturday was especially bright and calm, many farmers had burned weeds. They all thought the fires were out that night, but some found out different At . 4 p. m., the firemen were called to the George Stewart farm in Hinckley where a chaff stack was on fire, evidently set by spark from Saturday's brush burning. Within 5 minutes after the dept. left for Hinckley another alarm came from Jim Brady's farm at Abraham where a stack of chaff was burning. That fire was brought under control and out before the firemen finished at Hinckley and could go on. Then about 7 p. m., the fire truck was just getting back to town and had stopped at Dick Morrison's station to fill up with water when Irvin Allred stopped to tell them there was a fire at Clinton Tolbert's South Tract farm. So off they sailed again, without waiting for the siren, which whistled whist-led within a minute or two later. Mr. Tolbert had burned weeds Saturday and thought all was out that night. Instead, flames were eating into his hay stack. The firemen pulled up to the south of the stack and sprayed it well with water. A crew then got on the stack and rolled up the fire in wet hay. and peeed off the top of the stack. The fire was soon out, with the loss of three tons of hay. TOO MANY BUTT IN The firemen worked with speed on these fires, despite the handicap handi-cap of being crowded, hemmed in, snarled in traffic and otherwise frustrated. When the sirens sounded, sound-ed, crowds of the curious leaped into cars and were of NO HELP in fighting the fires. Friday evening was an example. As the fire truck rushed screeching screech-ing toward the overpass, so did 20 or 30 more cars. It looked for a while as though they would all hit the overpass at once and splin ter the guard rails to slivers. The state highway patrol car was the winner, and whizzed over the overpass over-pass with the fire truck a close second. COULD LEVY $25 FINE As one fireman said, "Every boy, but what had a right to be, was there." The firemen would like to remind the public that, there is a $25 fine for following the fire truck within 500 feet, or for not clearing the highway at its approach. ap-proach. There is grave danger of loss of life, accidents, and costly property damages when the volunteer vol-unteer fire department is not given an immediate right-of-way. Will you please bear this in mind, and give the firemen your best help by staying well away. |