Fire after 9 p.m. Saturday consumed recently stacked hay bales at an agriculture supply store on E. Highway 44 in Rapid Valley. Co-owner Janice Morgan said she feared if remaining stacks couldn't be knocked down and pulled away, the 3,000 bales could burn for days.

Flames destroyed the fabric covering of the hay storage unit at D&M Ag Supply/ZIP Feeds, the former Rapid Valley Hatchery. Heat from the burning bales, and the potential for spreading to surrounding grass, threatened a small nearby strip mall, and firefighters were spraying the buildings to cool them and prevent embers from starting additional fires.

The cause of Saturday's fire wasn't certain, but the July Fourth holiday and reports from a friend of seeing fireworks hit the fabric-covered Quonset storage building gave Morgan her chief suspect.

"We've always had concerns, and there so many people that are so careless, and we've always had hay outside," she said. Morgan and her brother Larry Dickey own the operation that their father, Jim Dickey, started in 1973.

The fresh bales from their supplier in Caputa were stacked before closing time Friday. They have hay elsewhere for customers who come from an area spanning Scenic to Newcastle and Hot Springs to Sturgis.

"We can recover if we can find a source of good first-cutting hay," she said.