It surely wasn’t a quiet or peaceful night around Bend – but then again, the Fourth of July never is. Still, the always-busy time for police and firefighters apparently didn’t turn up any serious injuries or major brushfires, to everyone’s relief.

“It was actually a pretty good night,” said Bend police Lt. Jerry Stone. “As far as I know, no one got injured.”

That despite the hundreds, perhaps thousands of illegal fireworks shrieking and blazing into the night sky well before, during and after The Bulletin’s big fireworks show from the top of Pilot Butte, which featured quite a dramatic improvement in the finale of the 25-minute event.

From the south, at least, it appeared about halfway through the show that perhaps another tradition – a fire on the butte – had happened. But officials reported no such occurrence and said it probably was a combination of low-hanging smoke and the lights of fire trucks at the ready, as they are every year.

Some areas of town seemed to have fewer booms and blasts in the days leading up to the holiday. But not Sunday night, when it again sounded like a war zone for at least a couple of hours before and an hour or so after the big show on the butte.

“On the Fourth of July, drunks take precedence over fireworks,” Stone said, reporting “three or four” DUII arrests. “We had a number of (domestic) disputes, none of them major,” he added.

Several fireworks-related brushfires were reported in the Bend area, including one by the Bend Parkway’s Colorado Avenue offramp and another out east, near the Pilot Butte 6 Cinemas. But most were contained, even doused before firefighters arrived on scene, said Bend fire Battalion Chief Dave Howe.

“They (the crews) were as busy as they expected to be,” Howe said. “No injuries, no big fires. Most were put out by occupants before we got there. The guys didn’t have to work too awfully hard.”

But Howe disputed the notion that the previous nights were any quieter. “In my neighborhood, we’ve had some sporadic booms – real window-rattlers,” he said. “I don’t remember those being so potent.”

The Bend Fire Department’s final weekend tally: Ten brushfires and a tree fire related to fireworks and three dumpster fires of undetermined origin.

Traffic “gridlock” was reported by an officer near Pilot Butte after the fireworks show ended, as throngs of people left the big Red White and Blues Festival at the foot of the butte.

Deschutes County sheriff’s deputies and Redmond police also were kept on the run with calls about illegal fireworks, and also made some DUII arrests, dispatch logs indicated. Several reports of illegal fireworks were logged by sheriff’s deputies, and at least one person who said he’d bought the devices was cited in the Gerking Market Road area north of Tumalo.

Most runaway dogs back home again

The Fourth is a rough night for many pets as well, as dogs with those sensitive ears freak out from all the loud booms, and many run away.

“In the past two days, we’ve taken in 18 strays and taken 16 back home, though only a couple had ID tags on them, and those were out-of-state,” said Troy Kerstetter, animal welfare director at the Humane Society of Central Oregon (www.hsco.org).

“Luckily, they (the owners) came down here when we were here,” Kerstetter said. “That’s why we push the ID so hard, so we can call them.”

“A couple of these dogs were picked up quite a distance from where their owners live,” he said. “They ran and ran and ran. One dog ran his little paw pads off. It’ll be fine, but it’ll be limping and sore for a couple weeks. At least he got home. The owner was more than a little grateful.”

This entry was posted on Monday, July 5th, 2004 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Top Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.