Fires again scorch area countryside

For the second week in a row, Ozark County's small army of volunteer firefighters scrambled to contain numerous wildfires around the county.
The Ozark County Sheriff's Department reported 13 fire calls over the weekend, seven of them on Sunday when unseasonably warm temperatures combined with high winds that fanned the flames and made the fires tough to fight.
Most of the fires are suspicious in nature, and some firefighters think an individual or group of individuals may be going around setting the fires.
"We're not sure how it started. Probably somebody with a Bic lighter," said Allen Edgington, a spokesman for the Theodosia Area Volunteer Fire Department, talking about a 15-acre wildfire that kept his department and seven Wasola firefighters busy for several hours Sunday night.
Edgington said the fire was in the Barren Fork area. No structures were threatened.
Sunday's record-high temperatures in the mid 80s and winds gusting up to 40 miles per hour pushed the fire danger to the extreme.
"We nearly had one get away from us," said Pontiac VFD spokesman Charles Wilson, talking about a grass fire at the corner of W Highway and CR 119. "Those winds were blowing grass and sparks something fierce about a foot off the ground and it blew the fire across W Highway," he said.
Wilson said they were able to quickly extinguish the blaze, thanks in part to being in the right place at the right time, but also thanks to a five-ton Army truck the fire department recently acquired.
"It's a 600-gallon truck with 1 1/2 inch lines that can put a lot of water on a fire real quick," Wilson said. "If it would have been a normal brush truck we were using, that fire may have gotten away from us. And if that fire had continued burning across W Highway, it would have gone from here to the circus."
Firefighters battled several fires the week before, including a 620-acre blaze in the Dugginsville area that destroyed three homes.