You could call it a sort-of rush hour in Dayton. Dozens of fire trucks, tanker trucks and ladder trucks jockeying for positions and water around the intersection of North Diamond Lake Road and Zanzibar Lane.

"I could see the smoke as I was coming this way," said Terry Bodell, who lives nearby. "This is unheard of."

Bodell saw the fire and called 911. As fire crews responded, they could also spot the smoke from miles away.

"We got in route and noticed a heavy column of black smoke," said Dayton Fire Chief Jason Mickelson. "It's very hard to get to, we had to call for mulitiple tankers, and we have no hydrants around here."

Firefighters had to rush to get water the rural way. They used tanker trucks to haul water into drop tanks. The nearest hydrant required driving about five minutes away.

But firefighters also faced a challenge in the property itself. The century-old farm is strewn with old trucks, lumber, farm equipment, even parts of an airplane and a Greyhound bus.

"There were a lot of outbuildings and then a lot of stuff in side of them, tires, old cars, somebody's personal property that they've been collecting for over a long time," said Chief Mickelson. "You name it, it was in one of the sheds."

Adrian Dahlheimer could only watch nearby as the fire ripped through buildings only he could identify. Dahlheimer says there was a sheep barn, an old streetcar that was used for a granary, a steel granary, a machine shed, an RV full of tires, an old pumphouse, and an old milkhouse.

"It's too bad, you know," said Dahlheimer. "But what do you do?"

Dahlheimer thinks the fire started earlier in the day in the sheep barn when he used a chainsaw to cut through a bale of hay. He says the chainsaw sparked a small fire, but he put it out.

"Then I took off and went to town and when I came back, this is what I got," said Dahlheimer. "What do you do? There's nothing I can do."

Fire crews brought in heavy equipment to tear down some of the structures to make sure they fire was extinguished. They stayed out on the scene until 9:30 p.m. and then had to return Friday morning for about an hour and a half to extinguish more flames.

Fire investigators have yet to release the official cause of the fire.

Shannon Slatton, reporting

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