Grain bin full of corn does a slow burn in Jefferson

Employees at a western Iowa cooperative may have saved thousands of bushels of grain when they noticed smoke coming from a grain bin in Jefferson. West Central Coop spokeswoman Sarah Dorman says fortunately the corn was on a slow burn. She says, “We’ve got a layer of smoldering corn over at their location. There’s no fire, there’s no flames. We’ve got some damaged corn that heated up and started to smolder.” Dorman says local fire officials and the state fire marshal’s office are now watching the bin. She says, “What they’re doing now is working on loading the grain out of that bin. We’ve got trucks at the location, and we’re taking the inventory out of that bin one truck at a time, and taking it over to our Beaver location.” Dorman says the process will take several days because the 700 thousand bushel steel bin was two-thirds full.