, 
A newly installed grain dryer sparked a fire Sunday night at the CHS Elevator in Magnolia.
The Magnolia Volunteer Fire Department was dispatched at 7:55 p.m. Sunday to the facility. Smoke was seen pouring out of the dryer located on the east side of the in-town facility.
The Luverne Fire Department was paged to provide mutual aid at 8 p.m., according to the Rock County Sheriff’s Office.
According to Magnolia Fire Chief Scott Dohlmann, as the trucks arrived at the scene, a dryer hatch was opened to empty the tall metal structure of corn when the dryer burst into flames.
Firefighters doused the flames with hoses pointed inside the dryer while corn was being emptied. The flames were extinguished in about 10 minutes.
Dohlmann estimates the dryer to be a total loss.
“It was a tedious process to empty the corn out,” he said.
Grain was spread at a 6-inch depth in a nearby concrete bunker to extinguish the smoldering grain.
No explosions or loss of other nearby concrete grain storage structures were reported. Firefighters were on the scene for two hours.
The cause of Sunday’s fire has not been released.
On Dec. 12, 2019, the dryer bin at CHS also burned. Wetter corn coming out of the fields last fall contributed to the cause of fires in grain bin dryers, which had been operating at higher temperatures to keep up.