SHELTON — Firefighting and forest management representatives gathered at the Shelton Civic Center Tuesday to talk about fire safety this season. Representatives of Green Diamond Resources, Mason County Emergency Management and Central Mason Fire EMS aimed to create more community awareness in the midst of drought conditions expected to continue this summer.
Eric Schallon with Green Diamond Resources, the largest tree farm operation in Mason County, urged people pulling trailers to make sure safety chains are up off the road pavement, which can cause sparks that ignite dry roadsides.
“Probably one of the most frequent ways that vehicles and traffic cause fires is the chains drag and they hit the asphalt and they throw sparks in to the weeds in the margins of the road and very quickly we can have an issue,” Schallon said.
Green Diamond has firefighting equipment on its properties and works closely with Mason County fire districts and the state Department of Natural Resources in firefighting and prevention, Schallon said.
Tammi Wright, with Mason County Department of Emergency Management, said there is a Mason County Disaster Animal Rescue Team of volunteers. They help people on their remote rural properties evacuate large animals such as horses.
“We are really grateful because we don’t have a lot of volunteer groups that help with animals,” Wright said.
Capt. K.C. Whitehouse with Central Mason Fire EMS, said homeowners need to be ready to leave their homes in a moment’s notice because wildfire threats are growing in western Washington.
“I know that this isn’t something that folks particularly in western Washington are used to,” Whitehouse said. “If you live in eastern Washington and you’re used to what has happened there historically this is part of life but this is something as a fire service we’re trying to get out a message to the folks in our community that again it’s part of the this changing fire regime in western Washington that we need to be thinking about evacuations and moving quickly if a fire threatens your community or threatens your home.”
Mason County Fire Marshal Mike Patti, who is also deputy chief with Central Mason Fire EMS, said rural residents need to clearly address their homes.
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Central Mason Fire EMS Public Information Officer Norma Brock said besides local media outlets, a new Facebook page has been created to share accurate and timely wild fire information. It’s call Mason County All Hazards News.
“Maybe you live down a long driveway where the driveway forks off two or three or four places,” Patti said. “Maybe you’ve got an address or mail box at the very foot of your driveway, but maybe where the driveway forks off there isn’t an address that tells us where to turn. And when time counts, when seconds count it’ll thrown us off if we have a 50-50 chance as to which way we turn, and we turn the wrong way, backing up a 30-foot fire engine all the way all to the last fork takes up a lot of time.”
Brock said the intent is to have one place for everyone to go to for the latest wildfire information.
“We’re hoping to put all information out this page, including big fires and big events and those will be shared to other Facebook pages,” Brock said.
Central Mason Fire EMS, North Mason Regional Fire Authority, the U.S. Forest Service, Mason County Sheriff’s Office are among emergency jurisdictions with individual Facebook page, but Brock said the new All Hazards page will share notifications with them and vice versa.
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