Town of Eagle firefighters resting after two long days

EAGLE (WITI) -- Firefighters from all over southeast Wisconsin were called into action to help put out the fire at the Echo Lake Foods plant in Burlington. But one fire department is hoping for a quiet weekend. That's because in addition to battling the Burlington blaze, they were called to a fire in their own town.

"Our role within Waukesha County was to deliver water in conjunction with other organizations to that fire so we were fortunate in that when we returned to service, there wasn't a whole lot of clean up that we had to do to get prepared for the next one," said Justin Heim, Eagle Fire Chief.

The fire in their own community came less than 24 hours after the start of the Echo Lake Foods fire. Although the scale was much smaller, sub-zero temperatures quickly turned the house fire into a four-alarm blaze.

"You just get fatigued a lot more quickly and that's why it's necessary for us as commanders to bring in those additional resources so we have plenty of crews to cycle through while giving those other folks a break to recover," said Heim.

Chief Heim finally went to bed at 9 a.m. Friday after more than ten hours of fighting fires.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt in Thursday night's house fire. The residents had working smoke detectors which allowed them to escape.