This past weekend the Fire Department responded to two seperate structure fires. Both fires were well underway when the first arriving units arrived on-scene. Both fires started on outside decks and quickly spread to the roof area of their respective structures.
The first fire was reported at about 0100 hrs on Sunday morning, everyone got out of the house without incident and there were not any firefighter injuries, both very good things. The house was significantly damaged by the fire, the repairs will take between 3 and 6 months to complete. Apparent Cause: Discarded smoking materials on the deck on the back side of the house
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The second fire was reported to us about 1800hrs on Sunday evening. Again the first arriving fire vehicles found an apartment building with substantial fire in the roof area. While is appeared that all occupants were out safely, we couldn’t be certain that the two apartment units directly involved were clear, a crew was sent into each unit to do a quick search for victims. No people were inside either apartment. Our police officers had done a great job of seeing to it that the units not directly impacted by the fire were unoccupied, that saved us time and allowed us to concentrate our efforts on the apartments being directly impacted. We called neighboring departments from Bloomington, Chanhassen, Edina, Hopkins and Minnetonka to help battle the fire. Apparent Cause: Discarded smoking materials on the deck of a top floor apartment.
Total loss for the day is estimated to be about $1,000,000, there were 17 families displaced and over 100 firefighters spent hours battling these two fires. All of this damage and heartache could have been avoided by a little more care when handling cigars and cigarrettes.
Last year the state of New York passed legislation requiring all cigarettes to be self extinguishing. The complete data is not in yet, but I have talked to people from New York and they tell me these kinds of senseless fires are dropping. Canada has enacted the same legislation nationwide.
Next year the Minnesota State Fire Chiefs may try again to convince our state legislators to pass legislation requiring self extinguishing cigarettes. There is strong pressure against this move from the tobacco lobby, but if all of Minnesota’s concerned citizens get involved, call their respective legislators and voice their support for fire resistive cigarettes we can join other progressive states and reduce the loss of property, injury and life to these highly preventable fires.
This is a picture of my good friend and colleague Fire Chief Nyle Zikmund. Nyle is the Chief of the Blaine/Spring Lake Park/Moundsview Fire Department. Nyle is a progressive thinker in the fire service and his fire department reflects that vision with a very strong fire prevention and inspection program. Nyle is also very involved in the legislative process and knows his way around the scene at our legislature.
