You will see firefighters back on the scene of a fire near the Gardner Swamp after more than 70 acres burned in a field Tuesday afternoon. The Brussels-Union-Gardner Fire Department was first paged to the scene near Gravel Pit Road and Fox Lane just before 3 p.m. after reports of an off-road vehicle catching fire in a nearby field. En route, B-U-G Assistant Fire Chief Jim Wautier says they quickly activated the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS) to bring in assistance from other departments when they saw the plume of smoke rising over the affected area. When it was all done, more than 140 firefighters from 19 departments in Brown, Door, Kewaunee, and Manitowoc counties were deployed, using a combination of brush trucks, UTVs, and other fire apparatus to knock down the flames that had jumped a road and climbed over 20 feet into the sky. Wautier says the dry conditions, the dead ash trees in the swamp area, and the small presence of wind helped the fire grow. Once darkness fell, Wautier adds that they had to call crews out of the woods just in case portions of the burned ash trees came crashing down. Wautier is grateful for all the support they had to fight the blaze, which included the use of drones to identify hot spots.

Firefighters are keeping an eye on the area as a precaution due to some of the trees and other debris in the area still potentially burning. As it was, firefighters were on scene for nearly four hours while using approximately 30,000 gallons of water in the process.