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Lake Dillon Fire Waits To Send Help To California

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Jul 5, 2008 8:28 pm US/Mountain

Lake Dillon Fire Waits To Send Help To California

Reporting
Andrea Lopez
SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4) ― Typically veteran Colorado firefighters help out in a crisis like they have in California, but fear of fires from fireworks is keeping some mountain crews from going.

Lake Dillon Fire Rescue officials say it's great experience to fight wildfires in other states and they like to help. They normally can send an engine and about four firefighters, but since the fire danger is so high and the Fourth of July weekend, they could not afford to offer the help.

There is currently not a fire ban in Summit County and Lake Dillon Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Berino prepared the local fireworks Friday. He said he rather would have people attend the show instead of setting off fireworks on their own.

"Leave the shows to the professionals. Anything that flies or blows up is illegal in Colorado," Berino said. "Law enforcement is taking it very seriously."

Officials said they will be able to send some firefighters after the Fourth of July weekend.

The Fourth of July weekend is the busiest weekend of the year at Lake Dillon. The county's population could triple in size and people have already proven careless with fire. There have been five fires in five days.

"We have never had five wildfires in five days," Berino said. "We did have a fire that was arson, and that particularly upsets me that somebody would deliberately try to cause harm to the citizens and our firefighters up here."

He also said it's upsetting because the fire danger is so bad due to the large amount of dry, dead trees killed by the pine beetle.

There has been no precipitation near Lake Dillon in the past month.

"One mistake and the right weather conditions and we could have a disaster up here," Berino said.

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