Holy smokes!

Two weeks ago on June 25, I received messages from panicked individuals at the Elks Lodge RV Park stating that the Boulder City Fire Department had been conducting a controlled burn that had gotten out of control.

RV’ers there were experiencing serious respiratory issues. I didn’t know anything about a planned burn, but I assumed the fire department would quickly contain it. I called back but couldn’t reach anyone.

The next morning I was riding my bike on the River Mountain Loop Trail through Bootleg Canyon and for some reason decided to deviate from my normal route home and instead wend my way through Boulder City’s business district. As I headed down Boulder City Parkway from the stoplight at Veterans Memorial Drive toward the center of town, I began to smell a strong scent of smoke and wondered if forest fire plumes might be blowing in from California.

But there wasn’t much of a breeze, and there didn’t seem to be the tell-tale general haze on the horizon.

As I passed Firestone Tires, Vinny’s Little Italy, Dairy Queen, and McDonald’s a little before 7 a.m., the cloud of smoke became so thick that I started thinking one of the businesses must be on fire. The waves of smoke were making it difficult to breathe and very uncomfortable.

But it wasn’t until I traveled past Jack in the Box and Auto Specialists that I realized what was happening. As I rounded the bend at the Elks RV Park in front of the fire department and headed toward Fox Family Bakery, out of the corner of my eye I saw a firefighter overseeing a flurry of nearby activity in the adjacent desert area.

I quickly stopped, turned around, and beheld the problem. Thick, black smoke was billowing heavily from the fire department’s new two-story training tower and wafting over the RV Park toward the Chicken Shack, Toto’s Mexican Restaurant, Pit Stop Burgers, and various other businesses, mobile home parks, and motels. All of the businesses in the old Von’s shopping center were definitely enveloped in the smog and pungent odor. And businesses like 7-11, CVS, Boulder City Collectibles and Antiques, Starbucks, Snap Fitness, and Albertsons were in the smoke’s unhealthy path as well.

It was so bad that I felt compelled to take a quick video. Quite honestly, it caught me off guard. In fact, I was a bit shocked. I’m sure the training happening in and around the new burn structure is cutting-edge and essential to the development of our firefighters and first responders.

But everybody downwind from the burn for a mile or more was put in harm’s way. And that was a relatively still morning with almost no wind. Had the whispery breeze been blowing a different direction, Story Book Homes residents or Boulder City Hospital patients would have been in the malignant path instead.

Without warning, many residents and business patrons were being subjected to the worst kind of second-hand smoke. The fire department had created a very toxic public health situation to say the least.

I’m willing to give the fire department the benefit of the doubt that they’re still working out the kinks in the new training structure. And maybe there’s an exhaust vent still needing to be installed that I don’t know about? The training and cost-saving benefits of a facility like that in the fire department’s own back yard are fairly obvious. The idea is a good one that’s undoubtedly long overdue. Constantly traveling to Henderson or North Las Vegas for that kind of training is costly, burdensome, and far less than ideal. And we definitely need our fire and rescue personnel to be ready when emergencies arise.

But it seems incongruent and somewhat ironic that a facility designed to optimize readiness for eventualities like natural gas leaks, hazardous material spills, and extrication from smoke-filled buildings would itself be spewing poisonous pollution into the surrounding environment and, worse yet, directly forcing others nearby to endure it. The fire department is supposed to be enhancing the health, safety, and welfare of our citizens, not weakening or diminishing it. It seems impossible that the new burn tower complies with even the most basic EPA standards.

If the noxious and potentially lethal side effects of the new training facility can’t be worked out in short order, then the city needs to seriously consider moving it to a more remote location post-haste. Even if it costs the city another $1.2 million to do so. With over 200 square miles of land at our disposal, I’m sure there’s somewhere else nearby within the city limits that would suffice.

I won’t pretend that I saw this problem coming. But now that we know about the unintended consequences, I hope our local officials will act quickly to mitigate and remediate them.