Polk County wildfire 'intentionally set,' burns hundreds of acres, county says

A grass fire that burned hundreds of acres Friday at Chichaqua Wildlife Area in northeast Polk County was intentionally set, a county official said.

At about 5:45 a.m., firefighters, sheriff's deputies and county conservation workers responded to the fire near the 9400 block of Northeast 118th Avenue, near Maxwell, said Doug Romig, deputy director of Polk County Conservation.

"It was intentionally set by an unknown individual in three locations," Romig said of the fire.

At about 11 a.m., the fire had been 90 percent extinguished, he said. While 600 to 700 acres of grassland burned, no structures were damaged and no one was hurt.

County conservation workers had prepared the site for a controlled burn in the spring, but no county employee set the fire Friday, Romig said.

Because the fire appeared to have started in three places, it appears intentional, Romig said. "It's not like someone threw a cigarette out their window and started this fire," he said.

Romig was uncertain how the suspicious nature of the fire would be investigated, and he said the county conservation department would leave that to the appropriate fire department. As of about 11 a.m., he was uncertain which fire department would investigate, since several responded to the fire. The county and responding fire departments planned to have a debriefing meeting in the near future.

Fire departments from Bondurant, Maxwell, Collins, Cambridge, Mitchellville and Elkhart responded to the fire, Romig said. "It went very well from an operational standpoint," he said.

As of about 10 a.m., a Polk County Sheriff's Office spokesman said there was not an open arson investigation regarding the fire.

As no structures were destroyed, the fire's damage was negligible, since the county had planned a controlled burn for the area anyway, Romig said.

But he said the unplanned nature of the fire was dangerous, because it could have caused much more damage if firefighters and conservation workers had been unable to contain it.

Romig could not say what caused the fire, which remains under investigation.