July 4 fires minimal

Fourth of July is usually a busy time for fire departments, but not this year, according to local fire districts.

West Mason Fire Chief Matthew Welander said it was a quiet Fourth of July for his department.

"Agencies and organizations got ahead of most of the issues and put rules in place and did a good job of advertising them," Welander wrote in an email to the Journal. "We had one incident involving a firework starting a very small fire. We had prepositioned crews in that area and the fire was put out quickly."

Welander said it has been a slow fire season but "we are really just coming into a typical summer."

"I am a little nervous about the rest of the summer," Welander said. "My hope is that we haven't all been lulled into a false sense of security by the slow start to the summer compared to last year. We all need to be vigilant when it comes to fire safety. Remember that Western Washington summer typically starts around the middle of July and stays pretty hot and dry until mid-October."

He said crews are ready to tackle fires this summer.

Central Mason Fire and EMS Deputy Chief Jeff Snyder said the Fourth of July call volume was slower than last year, running 99 incidents this year compared to 128 incidents last year.

"It's funny, our 911's often come in spurts," Snyder told the Journal in an email. "One minute, we can have all our units available, then 10 minutes later, we may be down to one unit or worse yet, no units at all. The fire district utilizes mutual aid as well as a preset call-back procedures in place to help cover when these situations occur."

Snyder said there were no official reports of illegal fireworks, although a few incidents were called in as fireworks related. Two reports of house fires were called in. "One turned out to be fireworks reflecting off trees" and the other incident was a person throwing gasoline on an outdoor fire, "causing a large fireball that was seen by neighbors and called in."

Snyder said the summer fire season has been quiet for Central Mason Fire, and the cooler, wetter spring has been great for lawns and gardens, and kept the fire risk lower. The side effect to that is light fuels such as grasses and other light vegetation grow quickly.

"I know this because I'm mowing my lawn twice a week," Snyder said. "The lush green grass and pretty flowers are great now, but as always, the abundant growth will be a problem later in the summer when the hotter drier weather does arrive the

grasses and other light fuels become dried out light "flashy fuels" are easy to get burning, once burning these fuels contribute to rapid fire growth. So let's all be careful."

North Mason Regional Fire Authority Chief Beau Bakken said the weekend wasn't busy for NMRFA with 34 calls, but it was the severity of those calls, including an ATV rider death on the Tahuya Peninsula on July 3. There was a near-fatal firework explosion that "severely injured a man on Haven Lake," he said.

The NMRFA doesn't respond to fireworks complaints anymore, according to Bakken, because the number of complaints that come in are "overwhelming and greatly diminish our response capabilities to emergency incidents."

Bakken said wildfire season hasn't started yet, but that will change with the hot weather. He said he hopes people who recreate in Mason County are hyper vigilant about safety as the weather gets hotter.

"Over the past month we have seen some horrific incidents in Mason County that tie directly to recreation activities," Bakken wrote in an email to the Journal. "Have fun, but please keep safety at the forefront."

Author Bio

Matt Baide, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
Email: [email protected]

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