Someone — or perhaps several ‘someones’ — seems to like setting fires in abandoned Pulaski County homes.
Several fire chiefs reported suspicious blazes at Wednesday night’s meeting of the Pulaski County Fire Chiefs Association. In most cases, the blazes happened in trailers or older houses that have been abandoned for many years and have no utility service connected to them.
Fires meeting that description have happened recently in the Buckhorn area of the Waynesville Rural Fire Protection District, in the city of Crocker, and in several rural areas outside Dixon.
Crocker Fire Chief Ken Gardner said one of the blazes in his city is especially problematic.
“We worked a couple of fires; the last one was on Hawkins, and after some discussion we decided to call the state fire marshal’s office,” Gardner said. “A car showed up earlier, according to the neighbors, and took everything out, and a few hours later it was fully involved in fire.”
Dixon Fire Chief Dennis Lachowitz reported that he’s had only a few fires until three recent blazes, one of which appears to have been set by a juvenile fire-starter and another two in abandoned buildings: a trailer and an abandoned farmhouse in the woods.
Fire chiefs at the meeting said they’ll continue to share information on the fires to determine if they’re similar to each other and whether any of the blazes are connected.
In other business:
Gardner reported that the Crocker Rural Fire Protection District has donated another truck to Raymondville firefighters south of Fort Leonard Wood who had no fire equipment. The second truck was loaned to Crocker under a grant program by federal officials and the loan has now been transferred to Raymondville.
“They used it the next day to fight a fire,” Gardner said. “They’ve got a lot of trucks down there with Crocker names on it.”
Lachowicz said he’s having trouble finding parts for an older-model fire truck and may have to replace it.
“You just don’t find 1976 Fords around much anymore,” Lachowicz said.
Tri-County Fire Chief Rick Hobbs, who chairs the organization, alerted firefighters to the closure of two state road sheds, one in Swedeborg and the other in Montreal. The Swedeborg shed closure will affect the Crocker, Tri-County, Hazelgreen and Waynesville firefighters; the Montreal shed closure will affect the part of the Tri-County district northwest of Richland in Camden County.
That could become a major problem during winter weather, Hobbs said.
“They are closing state sheds and they have closed the Swedeborg state shed and moved all the people and equipment to St. Robert,” Hobbs said. “I asked if that will affect response time in snowfalls, and they said it definitely will.”