A stiff south wind fanned what was apparently a legal open burn in Liberty Township on Tuesday into a full-fledged brush fire requiring firefighters from five departments to extinguish.

Liberty Township Volunteer Fire Chief Bill Branham told the Chesterton Tribune today that at its peak the brush fire had spread to 10 acres of pasture on C.R. 600N east of Meridian Road.

The LTVFD with its brush truck and tanker, assisted by brush trucks and personnel from the Chesterton, Porter, South Haven, and Washington Township departments, responded to the scene around 3:15 p.m., Branham said. The property owner advised that he had the necessary state permits to conduct an open burn--Porter County is a non-attainment area and normally open burns are illegal--but that he lost control of the fire in the high wind. “It got away from him,” Branham said. “It was perfect, wide open.”

The Porter Fire Department’s two “clod runners”--two four-wheel drive all-terrain vehicles like little dune buggies, PFD Chief Lewis Craig said, originally purchased in 2008 for the Dive and Rescue Team to run along beaches and each equipped with 60-gallon tanks and small nozzles--proved extremely useful, Branham said.

Even so, two or three brush trucks got stuck in the mud of the pasture while fighting the brush fire and had to be towed, Branham added.

It took firefighters a little under two hours to douse the brush fire and the LTVFD cleared the scene at 5 p.m.

Branham did say that this was the second brush fire to which the LTVFD has responded in less than a week. Folks need to know not only that open burns are illegal in Porter County and will be treated as such, with reports forwarded to the Indiana Department of Management. “They also need to realize that at this time of the season, before everything turns green, there’s a real good chance that any open burn, legal or not, is going to take off.”

The Chesterton Fire Department has also responded to two open burn complaints in the last week.

Posted 3/18/2009