Lansing Fire Department responds to pair of rural blazes last Wednesday

The Lansing Fire Department experienced a very busy Wednesday last week, being paged to a pair of fire calls Wednesday, December 4 in the rural area west of Lansing in the Churchtown area along State Highway 9. No injuries were reported in either blaze, and both are still under investigation as to their cause and the total amount of loss.

The Lansing volunteer crew was first paged to a house fire right along the highway in Churchtown just before noon. The fire originated in the basement and was contained to that basement area, with the upper levels of the home sustaining some smoke damage from the blaze, according to Lansing Fire officials. All occupants of the home were able to safely evacuate to a nearby location, where Lansing Ambulance crews were able to assess and clear all individuals as a precautionary measure. The Lansing Fire Department was on scene for approximately two and a half hours, having to transport water to the blaze via the department’s tanker truck. The Allamakee County Sheriff’s Department assisted with traffic control on the highway while fire crews tended to the blaze.

Not long after returning to the fire station, the Lansing Fire volunteers were called out again Wednesday afternoon, shortly after 3 p.m., to a combine that had caught fire in a field just off of State Highway 9 near the High Point Road area, just a bit further west of Churchtown. The fire was extinguished fairly quickly by the Lansing Fire Department once crews were able to get to the machine in the back of the field, but fire officials say the combine was a total loss.