No fireworks ban anticipated in Newport

Although the city of Newport has the authority to ban the use of fireworks during the Fourth of July if dangerous wildfire conditions exist, it doesn’t appear there will need to be any restrictions enacted this year.

Newport Fire Chief Rob Murphy spoke to the Newport City Council at its June 3 meeting to share the latest predictions for the upcoming fire season.

“For the fireworks ordinance … based on the weather predictions that I’ve been looking at, this year I don’t think it’s needed. I still expect early July conditions to be fairly good,” Murphy said. “As far as the display fireworks that the city pays for every year, those will go off as normal. It should be a show comparable to last year, and it will be on July 4 at 10 o’clock, shot off from the same location, which is the west end of the International Terminal.”

Murphy told council members that the weather in this area is transitioning from El Niño to La Niña conditions. “They expect the transition to be fairly quick and for it to happen toward the summer and then throughout the end of the year,” he said. “What that tends to mean for us here in the Pacific Northwest is it’s a fairly normal pattern, fairly average weather is basically what it says. There’s a slight increase for thunderstorms, but that’s not usually a huge concern for us on the coast.”

Murphy said that at least through July, “we’re looking at a fairly normal season. This bit of rain we just had sure didn’t hurt things. What a good soak like that in June does is it tends to push back the start of fire season a little more.”

Nevertheless, the fire department is still preparing for summer wildfires. “I think we live in a time when not preparing is just not a realistic option,” said Murphy. “So I’m having all the crews take wildfire prevention training, (and) we have some upcoming countywide wildfire training.”

Fire chiefs at departments around the county have agreed that when the area does reach high fire danger levels, “we will augment our response for any high-risk fire in the county,” Murphy said. “What we do when we augment our response is we send the three closest agencies … so you get a much bigger response when we do it this way. Plus, normally Oregon Department of Forestry is also going.”

It was also pointed out that backyard burning will be closed throughout the county on June 15. “Assuming conditions are normal, we’ll probably close June 15 most summers, and we’ll open it back up Oct. 15,” Murphy said. “We’re trying to give folks some predictability on when burning is allowed and when it’s not.”