Local fire and government officials were still tallying fires and other fireworks-related calls, as well as responding to new calls Thursday, but didn’t report responding to any major fires or serious fireworks-related injuries over the Fourth of July.
Clark County Fire Marshal Jon Dunaway said Thursday that the “season,” as fire departments and municipal officials count it, isn’t over, and they’ll need to sift through the past several days’ calls to determine which had fireworks components.
A rough count using dispatch logs from the Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency, the county’s 911 center, shows that people called in 138 outdoor fires from Monday to noon Thursday, with 124 of those calls coming, Wednesday, the Fourth of July.
In that time, the call center also fielded 708 noise complaints for fireworks, with 488 of them on the holiday. There were 21 structure fire calls on the Fourth of July, all for outbuildings.
“For (Wednesday) night, specifically, I think things went pretty well in terms of how people are using their fireworks,” Dunaway said.
Anecdotally, it seemed there was a much greater concentration of fireworks use Wednesday, he said, showing that more people are waiting to launch fireworks at the allowed hours.
It also meant fire departments were extremely busy that day, he said.
“Most of what they went to were grass fires, brush fires, those kind of incidents,” he said.
Since Sunday, fire marshal’s office staff have issued 10 citations for fireworks violations in the unincorporated county, he said.
“We’ll see if we need to be out beyond (Thursday) evening. We’ll see what the call volume is like,” Dunaway said.
In Vancouver, where personal fireworks use is banned, city staff had issued 101 fireworks citations by Thursday afternoon, according to Vancouver Fire Marshal Heidi Scarpelli, with the bulk of them cut Tuesday and Wednesday.
Still, it appeared the majority of people were cooperating with the city’s fireworks rules, and it didn’t yet appear anyone was badly hurt.
“One thing that’s missing, which I’m quite pleased about, is sometimes we have some pretty significant injuries, usually due to people taking some legal fireworks and modifying those,” she said.
According to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, the emergency department reported that it didn’t see any fireworks-related injuries over the Fourth of July. Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center did not have a tally available before press time.
Clark County Fire & Rescue Chief John Nohr said fire crews were out in his district ahead of the holiday to prepare — including getting parked cars out of fire lanes and taking stock of hydrants in new developments — but the predicted fire-aggravating weather didn’t arrive, and things didn’t appear to get too out of hand.
His initial impression was there were about a dozen small, fireworks-related grass fires in the area Thursday, with some reported the night before.
“I get nervous every year at the Fourth of July, just because of the volume of fireworks that gets used. I was extra nervous this year because of the predicted weather, but it just didn’t happen,” he said.
The fireworks season got off to an inauspicious start after a suspected fireworks-caused blaze tore through a home and two outbuildings in the Rose Village neighborhood.
