Mark Keller, the Wilton fire department's training officer, was fighting a grass fire Friday afternoon.

Then the fire turned on him, and now there's another fight to fight.

"He's got a long road ahead of him," said Wally Keller, 43, of Center, Mark Keller's brother.

Mark Keller, 33, was flown to a burn center in St. Paul, Minn. He was one of three firefighters injured in about a 2,000-acre grass fire Friday afternoon southwest of Wilton when the wind abruptly switched direction. Near the intersection of 305th Avenue Northwest and 54th Street Northwest, the fire jumped about 100 feet and engulfed three fire vehicles that were traveling in tandem, Wilton Fire Chief J.D. YoungBird said.

But YoungBird said he didn't notice the fire surrounding him because he was looking ahead in the area of the first fire truck in the convoy.

"I could see the other firemen out there burning," he said. His only thought then was to get to them and help.

Other firefighters injured were James Meyers, of Baldwin, who is at Medcenter One with second-degree burns on his face, and Geremy Olson, of Wilton, who is at St. Alexius Medical Center with second-degree burns on his left leg and a broken left leg and ankle.

YoungBird said he spoke with Olson and Meyers on Saturday morning.

"They were in good spirits," he said.

In addition to firefighting, Mark Keller also is a Burleigh County sheriff's deputy. Sheriff Steve Berg said he talked to Keller in the emergency room at St. Alexius Medical Center before he was flown out.

"He always thinks of everyone else first." Berg said.

Berg said Keller was concerned that his absence would mean a shortage of deputies.

"He was laying there in immense pain … talking about the department, about (it) being shorthanded," Berg said. "He always puts himself second."

Keller's wife of about a year, Michelle Keller, is with her husband. Berg said a Minnesota police officer's wife volunteered to stay with Michelle Keller through the night. He said the woman also helped her shop for necessities since she had left on a moment's notice, taking nothing with her.

Berg said Michelle Keller told him Saturday morning that "Mark is doing well under the circumstances." He has second- to third-degree burns and is expected to be in the burn center for about three weeks.

Daphne Keller, 70, Mark Keller's mother, said she has been told that he will need skin grafts on his arms and hands and doctors are watching the circulation in his fingers. Daphne Keller said Mark has been involved in firefighting since he joined Center's department at age 16.

Specifics on the condition of the other injured firefighters were not available Saturday.

Daphne Keller began to cry as she talked about the frustration of not being able to be with her son because of her and her husband's health problems.

Mary Senger, Burleigh County's emergency manager, said the first call came in at 3:15 p.m. Friday about a fire located three miles south and four miles west of Wilton. The fire started near 279th Avenue Northwest and 54th Street Northwest. Before it was contained, as of about 8:45 p.m., it traveled about 51/2 to 6 miles north and was about three-quarters of a mile wide in most places, YoungBird said.

He said a farmer had burned a tree pile more than a month ago and had taken all the necessary precautions - piled snow around it and worked the area so there was black dirt surrounding it. But apparently embers were burning underneath. With the wind, enough embers got away, YoungBird said.

"The whole blame is on the wind," YoungBird said.

Winds were blowing at 27 mph, with gusts to 45 mph.

Ruth Franklund, 79, said that at the behest of their children, she and her husband, Laurence Franklund, 85, evacuated their home, which was in the path of the fire, and stayed at her sister's home in Wilton for about two hours. She said the fire was stopped about a mile before it reached the farm, at 6201 Highway 83 N.W. - their home for 55 years.

YoungBird said Saturday morning that the fire still had hot spots and that the department was working on them.

He said he hadn't slept and that he didn't think he could if he wanted to as he was too focused on wanting to help the injured firefighters' families as well as working on hot spots.

Assistant fire chief Jeremy Birdsell said embers were still being doused along some tree groves in the area late Saturday afternoon.

Senger worked to get a fire ban in place for Burleigh County on Friday; emergency personnel in Morton County did the same.

Janine Vining, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Bismarck, said winds were expected to gradually decrease overnight Saturday.

Eleven fire departments responded to Friday's fire. YoungBird said that at one point, he counted 40 fire vehicles.

Mandan Rural Fire Department members were just heading home from a small campfire south of Huff when they got the call to help. A couple of trucks were sent Wilton's way.

"It was a big fire," said Don Friesz, a longtime Mandan rural firefighter. "I've been on the fire department for 23 years … I haven't been on one of them for at least 10 years."

"This one was so unpredictable, abnormal," YoungBird said. "We'd be fighting it from upwind and all of a sudden the fire would come upwind."

And there was another challenge.

"We didn't know the area, the terrain. It was all new to us," said Keith Sailer of the Bismarck Rural Fire Department, which assisted.

His department's work continued through the night with a fire in their jurisdiction at about 2 a.m. Saturday. A fire in a yard destroyed a garage near 53rd Street and 48th Avenue. And at about 5 a.m., they responded to the same neighborhood for a fire in an empty lot north of the first fire.

YoungBird said losing three firefighters is a big loss to the department.

"They're very good personnel, well-trained," he said.

YoungBird said that without that training, the situation could have been worse.

"We learned through training you do everything as a team," he said. "No truck goes by themselves. They all go in tandem."

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)