Fire chief: Fourth of July was ‘quieter’ than years past

This year’s Fourth of July celebrations — amid drought conditions and high winds that had heightened concerns about fires from illegal launching of fireworks — seemed to be less of a headache for local firefighters than in years past, officials with the Santa Fe city and county fire departments said Thursday.

Santa Fe County fire Chief David Sperling said his crews got 46 calls about illegal fireworks during Wednesday’s festivities, but they responded to only one fireworks-related brush fire.

“My sense, based on what I observed during patrol and listening to radio traffic, is that the restrictions imposed on the sale and use of fireworks were mostly effective,” Sperling said in an email. “This appears to have been a quieter Fourth of July for the Fire Department than in years past.”

Jan Snyder, assistant fire chief for the city department, said things were relatively quiet for crews there, too. Though that department didn’t keep count of how many calls it received related to illegal fireworks, he said.

“It seemed like there were less people doing their own thing in town, which is really great,” Snyder said. “Everything we post leading up to it, trying to deter people, maybe they listened for once.”

It’s typical for the city fire department to respond to a handful of brush fires on the holiday, Snyder said, and Wednesday night they had the typical few. They put out two small fires that crews assumed were caused by fireworks.

While it was windy much of the evening, Snyder said increased humidity likely was helpful in preventing more sparks.

Neither the city nor the county handed out any citations for illegal fireworks use, Snyder and Sperling said. However, Sperling said, county firefighters did issue warnings for each of the 46 illegal fireworks calls they responded to.