Holmes Fire District 1 Battles Two Fires in Eight Hours, No Injuries

Holmes Fire District #1 crews, with mutual aid from six departments, fought two separate wooded fires at the eastern end of Millersburg that together destroyed roughly nine acres, and no injuries were reported. The district posted an incident release on March 6 saying the fires “kept local crews working across the district within an eight‑hour span.”

The incident release posted March 6 also states, “The first incident began the evening of March 4, when firefighters responded at 5:39 p.m. to a detac,” a sentence fragment that is truncated in the copy provided by the district. Local reporting by The Daily Record contains a differing time for the initial call: Assistant Fire Chief Kyle Yoder told The Daily Record, “The call came in around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon for one fire near the eastern end of the wooded area beyond Fire Ridge Golf Course on the north side of state Route 39, back off Township Road 317, where high winds knocked down a tree on a power line, which went back to the transformer, causing it to blow and the resulting sparks ignited a fire.”

Yoder described how conditions helped the blaze move, and The Daily Record noted one of the fires “spread toward Ohio route 39.” The two wooded blazes were estimated at about three to four acres near Fire Ridge and about four to five acres closer to State Route 39, figures The Daily Record summed as “approximately nine acres” destroyed.

Firefighters on scene required help from neighboring departments. The Daily Record quotes Yoder saying, “That’s why we needed six departments there.” Crews and mutual aid units spent “more than four hours with mutual aid putting out the flames,” according to The Daily Record. Wind was an active complicating factor, Yoder said: “The high wind gusts we had didn’t help us any at all.”

Yoder also used the incident to reiterate statewide burn-ban rules, telling residents the ban runs “from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.” and warning, “After 6 p.m. you are still liable. You have to stay with the fire until it is fully extinguished.” The reports provided do not name the mutual-aid departments, do not identify the utility that owns the transformer, and do not include a final investigative determination of cause. Holmes Fire District #1 posted the March 6 release documenting the two incidents; local officials and the district have not reported any injuries.