(Originally published at 12:53 p.m. MDT July 25, 2017)
(Updated at 4:52 p.m. MDT July 25, 2017)
There was a fatality at a fire in Fairburn, South Dakota Monday morning when a civilian died near one of two burned structures. Jim Strain, Assistant Chief of the Fairburn Volunteer Fire Department who was Incident Commander on the fire, said one of the structures, a single-family residence, was occupied and the other, a two-story house, was vacant.
No other information was available about the fatality as of 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday.
After the fire started around 10 a.m. calls were received in several fire departments in the area saying multiple structures were burning in Fairburn and it was spotting into the grass — send everything you can.
At around 11:30 a.m. firefighters had the one acre of vegetation and the structure fires knocked down with the help of a single engine air tanker. Since there is no high-volume water source in the small town so water tenders were driving miles to refill.
Chief Strain said there was a great interagency effort from three counties, state, and federal agencies.