First of all, I wish to THANK all of Geary County Firefighters, Ft. Riley Firefighters, Riley County Firefighters, White City Firefighters, and Fragrant Hill Firefighters who assisted at the I-70 fires on Friday. A big THANK YOU also goes out to area farmers: Phillip Goodyear and Brandon Dibben who supported our firefighting efforts with water support at the scene. Except for the Ft. Riley firefighters, all of the others are volunteers who give up their time and family life to help protect you by volunteering.
Since Friday, Geary County Fire has responded on 10 calls for service with 8 of those being fire calls. Many of these fire calls saw the same volunteers show up to protect property and mitigate the problem. They receive $10.00 for each call they respond on. These calls occurred during both the day and night time hours.
Geary County Fire has 17 fire units. We have 5 structure units, 1 tanker with 2,000 gallons of water, 4 small brush/fast attack units, and 7 brush units. At one point when both of the I-70 fires were going on, 5 units were still available to respond on calls in the western part of the county and two units were down. The other 10 units were on the fire scenes. Geary County is lucky to have 73 people who give their time and are proud to be Geary County Volunteer Firefighters.
On Saturday, 12 of the volunteers showed up at the main fire station to clean up the trucks, do maintenance on the trucks, and restock the units for the next call, which unfortunately came while they were still putting units back in shape. Saturday night, one truck had to be towed back to the station after the fuel line got plugged up. Three volunteers then spent several hours on Sunday, working and getting that unit back up and running. They hoped late Sunday afternoon that it was fixed and ready to respond. It was then moved back to it’s station to cover that part of Geary County.
Monday, the decision was made not to allow burning in Geary County. Riley County was also not allowing burning. At first glance, the winds were to be less than 10 mph but were to be variable. However, overnight the winds were to increase and during the day on Tuesday gust to over 45 mph. A front was coming in and the wind drastically changed direction. As we have seen many times before, fires from several days prior, when the winds shift and increase like planned for Tuesday, embers will blow and cause additional uncontrollable fires. In addition, should a fire start, I need to have volunteer firefighters who can respond to pick up a fire unit and fight the fire.
Monday, the availability of volunteers to respond was low as many were working their regular jobs. We did have a call reference a vehicle fire. The station that was paged for response had no one respond since no one was available. Other counties especially to the southeast allowed burning on Monday, and numerous fire units were out fighting fires that got out of control. Those fires are what caused the smoke over Geary County Monday evening.
In our office, we believe in being professional especially when we talk with the public either in person or on the phone. We expect that also from the public. Even though you might not agree with our decision on allowing burning or not, that is no right to verbally assault our office professional and use a derogatory word repeatedly on the phone when talking to her. The decision on burning is decided by the Fire Chief and the Asst. Fire Chief, taking factors into account including current wind and humidity conditions, anticipated weather for the next 24 hours, and availability of equipment and personnel. County Regulations require those burning to have a valid County Burn Permit which is obtained thru our office prior to any burning taking place.
We hope that this information helps the public understand what took place this past weekend and why we made Monday a No Burn Day. If you have questions about burning, county regulations, or wish to see about becoming a Geary County Volunteer Firefighter, please contact our office. Please follow us on FACEBOOK and make sure you sign up for the Everbridge Notification System.
Garry Berges, Director
Geary County Emergency Management