Centralia Fire Chief John Lynch says fire damage in the city during 2020 totaled $624,770 with total property saved estimated at nearly $1.9-million. Another $2.5-million of property at risk was protected.
In his annual report, Lynch says the largest fire was at Centralia Industrial Painting at 7 Precision Drive on April 14th. The fire damage kept the business from operating for a period of time and the building had smoke and heat damage throughout for a total of $400,000.
One member of the department has received an arson investigation certification and an arson unit has been developed. The year also marked the retirement of the 49-year-old Snorkel unit and 22-year-old ladder truck. They were replaced with a new platform and pumper truck. Outdated equipment, hoses, and nozzles were also replaced.
The department’s number of calls were up for the year to 2,003. That compares to 1,847 the prior year. There were no fire deaths and two civilian injuries. One was serious burn injury from a structure fire on Shook Lane and the other was a minor to moderate burn injury. There was one firefighter injury when a firefighter from another department was injured while providing mutual aid assistance in Centralia.
73 of the calls were for fires including 41 building fires, one mobile home fire, five-passenger vehicle fires, 11 woods and grass fires, and ten outside trash, waste, and rubbish fires. There were 114 calls for hazardous conditions and 336 calls for service. 107 of the calls were listed as good intent calls. There were 117 false alarms or calls. Four were considered malicious in nature, 83 were due to system malfunctions and 30 were unintentional.
The department completed 4,500 hours of training and held 816 training classes. They also performed pre-fire inspections, annual building inspections, annual pump testing, ladder testing, and the testing of over 800 fire hydrants.
Lynch says the department looks forward to performing more joint training in March with various departments. He notes the COVID-19 outbreak definitely hampered some of the goals they wanted to achieve. Lynch says the members of the department stepped up the efforts to keep everyone safe and continue to use and develop new safety protocols.
The Centralia Fire Department is currently staffed with a chief, 15 full-time firefighters, and four part-time firefighters.
