"Pennington County Fire Assistance Team remains on scene of the fire east of Fairburn and Hermosa."
CREDIT: PENNINGTON Co. FIRE
Fire crews are responding to a wildfire that started over the weekend.
The fire burned about 2,000 acres in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, just 10 miles east of Fairburn.
Klinton Rittberger is fire chief for the Fairburn Volunteer Fire Department. He says they’ve had roughly 60 people from local, state and federal agencies on the scene.
“It is becoming more and more contained every day. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s up to 50 percent contained today. Containment yesterday was at least 20 percent. We made a pretty good push yesterday. We even had a National Guard helicopter out with buckets and doing aerial drops on it [fire] from water out of a private dam.”
Rittberger says they’ve determined this was a human-caused fire. Crews continue to monitor active areas.
The National Weather Service reports the state will continue to see high fire dangers through Wednesday.
Here's a view of the Agate Bed Fire burn scar east of Fairburn, SD ( Image from March 7th) #sdwx #Sentinel #Satellite pic.twitter.com/dSZ1zgWY9p
— NWS Rapid City (@NWSRapidCity) March 8, 2021
Pennington County Fire Assistance Team remains on scene of the fire east of Fairburn and Hermosa @CusterSD_EM @BattleCreekFD
— penncofire (@penncofire) March 7, 2021
@penncofire @USFSNebraska pic.twitter.com/LJfBFvMdE4