The city of Tucson will switch from fireworks to drones for its next Fourth of July display. Tucson assistant fire chief Paul Moore says it could free up critical firefighting personnel on one of the busiest nights of the year.
“We measured our call volume from 7 p.m. at night until 7 a.m. the next morning, and we had a total of 95 fire-related incidents in the city,” Moore said. “That’s a 60% increase in fire calls versus a normal night.”
Although the city employs over 600 full-time staff and will call in additional help as needed, Moore says his department felt pressure from several risks.
“We were responding all throughout the city to various brush fires, dumpster fires, things of that nature,” Moore said. “While most of them we aren’t able to prove it — it’s pretty easy to say that most of them likely were caused by firework activity.”
This includes a small fire that broke out near A Mountain where the city’s annual fireworks display is held. Crews quickly extinguished it, but were unable to determine if it was from the display.
With many responders occupied with wildfires across the state and region, Moore says it could have been much worse.
“We did discuss that, which is part of the reason we deployed our wildland team to A Mountain. If something large were to take off, the large majority of the state’s resources were up in Sedona,” Moore said.
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