Firemen burn house near park for training

The quiet neighborhood at the base of the Blue Mounds State Park was a busy place Monday when the Luverne Fire Department exercised a controlled burn on the house next to the quarry parking lot.
The training, which began at 6 p.m. and continued after 10 p.m., allowed seven teams of firefighters to practice fighting house fires.
It meant the house was ignited and extinguished several times throughout the night, and it ultimately was reduced to a pile of rubble.
For more than 50 years, the property belonged to Alice Birkeland and her late husband, Tome Birkeland. New property owners Monte and Michelle Van Dyke plan to breakground this fall on a new house on that lot.