Home Contra Costa County ECCFPD: Fourth of July Activity Report

ECCFPD: Fourth of July Activity Report

by ECT

I received word this morning from East Contra Costa County Fire Protection District Chief Hugh Henderson that the District ran a total of 20 emergencies between 8 AM Wednesday morning and 5 AM this morning.

There were a total of four vegetation fires during the holiday. The largest fire was just less than 3 acres in the 1300 block of Tuolumne Way in Oakley. I have attached the dispatch reports for the four fires.

According to some of the firefighters who I spoke with last night, there was multiple calls with response times of over 15-minutes plus due to the location of the incident and the call volume.

Updated: 11:05 AM

The Contra Costa Times just put out a story on the Tuolumne Way fire which burned 3 acres. It required an engine to be on scene to watch for “hot spots” until 3 AM which essentially took 1 of our 3 engines out of play for about 5 hours.

“Illegal fireworks were being shot off everywhere in East County,” Battalion Chief  Jeff Burris said. “We got numerous calls for grass fires. This one just happened to be in a perfect field that had a lot of construction debris, so the large piles of debris caught fire when the grass caught fire. It looked spectacular.”

What I enjoyed about Burris quote to the Times is the pure honesty that had this been on a Saturday, a lot more problems would have occurred last night as the 3 stations are now stretched to a breaking point.

ABC News Video

OAKLEY, Calif. (KGO) — Firefighters are keeping an eye on a neighborhood in Oakley, after a grass fire was ignited by illegal fireworks.

The two and a half acre fire started around 10:30 last night in a field behind a dozen homes near Tuolumne Way. The East Contra Costa Fire District had to call for help from neighboring jurisdictions to contain the blaze. Recent budget cuts had reduced the number of fire stations in the district from six to only three.

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