A file photo of fireworks for sale. In Portland, more than two dozen fires in the hours celebrating the Fourth of July this year were caused by fireworks.
Cheyenne Thorpe / OPB
Firefighters all over Oregon spent the Fourth of July battling fires started by fireworks.
Battalion chief Mike Traeger says he’s been with the Gresham Fire Department for about 35 years, but “last night was exceptional for us just in the volume of fires that we had.” Portland, Gresham and Clackamas County firefighters had a wide area to cover and chipped in with mutual aid.
”I just had a hodgepodge of units that would arrive — Portland, Gresham — because there were so many fires going on,” Traeger said Wednesday. There’s no fireworks ban in Gresham and officials are still working out the official numbers on the fires started by fireworks Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. But at least one home was destroyed by fireworks that weren’t properly extinguished.
In Portland, where there is a ban, at least 25 fires were started by fireworks. But Portland Fire & Rescue spokesperson Rick Graves says that number will undoubtedly go up as more investigations are complete. Witnesses said a fire that destroyed a vacant building in Northeast Portland’s Lloyd District was started by fireworks, but Graves said that hasn’t been confirmed. Other than that, no major structural damage has been confirmed in Portland due to firework-related fires.
In Hillsboro, where there’s no fireworks ban in place, there were 11 fires started by fireworks on Independence Day, and five of them resulted in some degree of property or structural damage. Hillsboro Fire & Rescue spokesperson Piseth Pich says that number could go up.
And in Bend, like in Portland, there’s been a ban in place for two years. But firefighters there say they only responded to one fire started by fireworks on Tuesday. They say that fire was extinguished before it caused any damage.
