Portland Fire & Rescue has shared some preliminary numbers for their total responses for the week surrounding July 4th for 2022 and 2023. The graph below will show the number of responses for each day of the week surrounding the Independence Day Holiday broken out by call type.
The graph has total number of responses on each day broken into Medical, Hazardous Condition, Fire, and Other. The “other” category will change as the reports are completed for these call types. If an engine is dispatched to an “investigation” type call, it would be reflected in the “other” category in the graph. If this investigation was a fire that crews addressed, it will eventually reduce the number of “other” calls and increase the number of “fire” calls respectively once all reports are completed.
There was nearly a fourfold increase in fire calls on July 4th in 2023 over 2022, despite the ban being in place each of these years with 55 fires this year to only 16 last year. In the eight days that surround July 4th, there were 227 fires in 2023 while the same period in 2022 is nearly half of that with 138 fires. Although the number of fires was more in 2023 than in 2022, the number of responses was quite similar with the total calls of 8 days in 2023 was 2644, just slightly less than in 2022 with 2683 responses.
As of July 5th, there were at least 25 fires that were suspected to have been started by firework usage on July 4th alone, but this number could go up after all the reports are submitted by the fire officers working on each rig. Portland Fire & Rescue Fire Investigations Unit is currently investigating all fires that were suspected to have been caused by recreational fireworks. If firework use is found as a cause, the individual(s) will be held responsible. Fireworks use that causes injury or extensive damage can result in heavy fines and/or jail time.
PF&R is still amassing data and will follow up with a completed report regarding the call volume during firework season which runs from June 23 through July 6 each year.
