Town of Champlain

CHAMPLAIN ADDRESSES BURN BARRELS:

Fire commissioners don't want a repeat of this spring's rash of grass fires.

"I would bet you 75 percent of the fires this year were (from) burn barrels," John Filion told the Champlain Town Council at its June session. "It's usually the same ones all the time, and God forbid" somebody gets hurt.

Filion and Dr. John Southwick, both Champlain Fire District commissioners, presented a letter to the council asking that existing fire restrictions be emphasized and that further regulation possibly put in place.

Fire companies responded to numerous grass and brush fires throughout the North Country in March; over the course of just one week, Champlain Fire Department battled six, one of which destroyed a storage barn.

Most were touched off when breezes carried embers from burn barrels, which are not specifically banned under Town of Champlain law.

To do so, offered Joan Duquette of Clark Road, who attended the town meeting, wouldn't be fair.

"I don't feel it's proper to blame everybody for a few stupid people," she said.

Burn barrels are notorious for starting bigger blazes, said Filion, for the wind can so easily take a flaming bit of cardboard that ignites a dry field.
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The commission requested the town ban all fires during the months of April and May, but Calvin Castine, recording the meeting for Hometown Cable television, wondered about that.

"Putting in April and May is kind of arbitrary," he pointed out. "Come the end of June, we could have a drought."

The town can declare a burn ban at any time of the year, noted Code Enforcement Officer Michael Tetreault Jr.

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An existing regulation, found in the section of Town Code on burning solid waste, "is a very vague law," the code officer said after the meeting.

He'll be sending that wording to Thomas Murnane, attorney for the town, who will research burn laws in use around the area and put together one for the Town Council to consider.