Rural Clay County farm equipment fire goes viral

A Facebook post is going viral after a Clay County farmer lost thousands of dollars of equipment in a fire late last week.

Jonathan Rempel said he was getting his two children ready for school on Thursday morning when he received a phone call from the Sutton Volunteer Fire Department.

“They said, ‘Your harvest equipment is on fire,’” Rempel recalled. “All of it.”

According to the Nebraska State Fire Marshal’s office, the fire destroyed a combine, two trucks and trailers filled with grain, a tractor, and a grain cart. About an acre and a half of the corn field was also burned, but there were no injuries.

In the early morning hours of Thursday, Oct. 15th, several local fire departments responded to the fire about two miles south of Sutton.

Rempel described the location of the fire as a ‘very rural area’, two miles off the two-lane highway. Rempel’s post focused on the support he and his family received from the surrounding communities, but many of the nearly 7,000 people who shared the post made accusations of arson and political motivation. Rempel avoided making a political connection in his post, though he did confirm that two flags supporting President Donald Trump were on his combine. Trump won in Clay County in the 2016 election with 79.8% of the vote.

The Fire Marshal’s office says that the investigation into the fire is ongoing. They did not yet have an estimate of the costs.

Read the full post from Rempel below: