Pflugerville Fire Chief: July 4th one of busiest days for firefighters

TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) — As the sun set over Travis County on July 4, 2022, Austin Fire Department's incidents webpage rapidly added new incidents across the city and county: grass fires, structure fires and more.

Pflugerville Fire Chief Nick Perkins said that the night of July 4th is routinely one of the busiest nights for firefighters.

"I think it's a combination of it being a holiday weekend — there's a lot of people out celebrating," Perkins said. "Obviously, there's a fire danger because people are lighting fireworks. So, we see a dramatic increase in our number of fires. Last year, we had almost almost 30 fires in a shift, and that's a lot. That's everything from a small grass fire in the yard, all the way to structure fires. All of which had some involvement with fireworks."

Perkins said that in 2022 his department saw a 142% increase in call volume, which prompted extra staffing this year. Specifically, two extra brush trucks and firefighters to crew the vehicles.

"Because we have really good resources in Central Texas, we're able to get to these fires quickly," Perkins said. "We're able to extinguish them when they're small. They are easier fires for us to contain, but the sheer number of them begins to add up. You have so many of these incidents occurring at one time, and then an actual big emergency occurs at that same time. It's not a great situation."

The fire chief asks that members of the public leave fireworks to the professionals. His firefighters work with professional shows and are on standby near the show.

For those still wishing to use fireworks, he asks them to launch fireworks away from flammable objects and have a fire extinguisher on hand. After use, safe disposal practice is to soak remaining debris in water.

He also recommends not standing over fireworks and have a sober person designated to setup and light fireworks.

"We're in better shape than we were last year in terms of our wildfire risk," Perkins said. "It's not as bad as it was last year, but we're very much trending towards things getting more dangerous in terms of wildfire risk. We're in that moderate risk, that's not to be taken lightly. That's still a serious concern for us."