Fire Department

Ladder Co. 6 was dispatched to a tree on fire near a walking path at Olin Park. A person on the path flagged down firefighters to point out the tree’s location. After a quarter-mile hike along the lakeshore, the crew located a dead tree approximately 80 feet tall with fire coming from multiple holes in the trunk and out the top of its tallest branches. Firefighters used a water can extinguisher to put out fire that had spread to the nearby ground cover.

Because some of the fire was hard to access from land, Ladder 6 called for the assistance of the MFD Lake Rescue Team. Lake Rescue 1 responded by water and deployed its deluge gun to knock down the tree fire. Additionally, they provided a hose to Ladder 6 so firefighters could put out remaining fire on land.

Firefighters cannot definitively say what caused the fire, but they did note a pair of cigarette butts in close proximity to the tree fire.