Firefighters put out ‘suspicious’ fires in Grand Mound area Tuesday night
Firefighters put out several brush fires they consider suspicious near Interstate 5 at Ground Mound Tuesday night, West Thurston Fire Authority Fire Chief Nathan Drake said.
“As of right now, they’re currently under investigation,” Drake said Wednesday morning. “Just with the location of them and that we had multiple in the same general area, we believe they are suspicious.”
West Thurston crews responded to exit 88 of I-5 at about 9:30 p.m. following reports of brush fires in the area, Drake said. The crews found a field on fire with multiple starts along an adjacent railroad and the field. While crews extinguished that fire, they saw a thermal column about a quarter mile west of the first blaze.
Crews redeployed to that fire and extinguished it, he said. As they did so, they received reports of an additional fire in the area that bystanders put out on their own. Crews responded to that incident as well.
It took about an hour for crews to fully contain all the fires, Drake said. No people were injured and no structures were damaged.
“There were some structures in the area,” Drake said. “We weren’t necessarily worried about that because of the conditions the fire was burning. We were able to get it knocked down fairly quickly, so there was no evacuation.”
Drake said the fire authority is investigating the cause of the fires with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. He said DNR crews were patrolling the area Wednesday.
The South Thurston Fire and EMS, East Olympia Fire District 6, McLane Black Lake Fire Department and Riverside Fire Authority from Centralia assisted West Thurston, he said.
The I-5 ramp to U.S. Highway 12 at Ground Mound was closed as fire crews responded to the fires, the Washington state Department of Transportation shared on X.
Drake advised the public to exercise caution during the warmer weather.
“Especially as we start approaching the Fourth of July and the summer months, it starts getting hotter and drier, and fires are burning more readily,” Drake told The Olympian. “We need to have good fire safety. If this fire would have happened in August, it could have been a totally different ordeal.”
