Salem Assistant Fire Chief Bill Fulton says an unattended burn pile ended up starting a fire Sunday afternoon that burned down one shed and damaged a second.
The fire was on the Tannis Weems property at 4321 State Route 161.
The 12 by 16-foot wooden shed was fully engulfed upon the fire department’s arrival and had started to spread to a second shed a few feet away. Firemen were able to save the second shed which received only a small amount of damage.
Fulton says the burn pile was located between the two sheds.
Odin and Kell Firemen provided mutual aid on the scene, while Kinmundy-Alma Firemen stood by at the Salem Fire Station in the event of another fire.
The fire call came in at 2:30 Sunday afternoon at nearly the same time the Salem Fire Department was called to a grass fire at the 122-and-a-half mile marker on southbound I-57 about six miles north of Salem. The small fires in both the median and the shoulder of the Interstate were both caused by a tire blowing on a pickup truck that caught fire with pieces landing on both sides of the highway. The driver was not injured.
In all, the Salem Fire Department handled six calls on Sunday.
A pickup truck was destroyed in a late Sunday night fire on the County Farm Road near the Apple Ridge Road intersection. Nicholas Dagg of Salem reported the truck began smelling like smoke and some functions of the truck stopped as he was driving down the road. The pickup was fully engulfed in flames when firemen arrived. Dagg got out without injury.
Salem Firemen also searched for a possible house fire near the CVS store at West Main and Illinois early Sunday night but never found the source of the smoke that led to the call.
The other two calls were for the two Sunday injury accidents in the area.
