At 3:41 pm on Wednesday, October 31, 2024, the Chestertown Volunteer Fire Company was dispatched to the “Large Outside Fire” in the 23400 block of Clarissa Road. This is located in the Chesapeake Landing residential community, off Lambs Meadow Road (Maryland 298) and Handy Point Road (see attached map), near the small unincorporated community of Melitota. The 9-1-1 caller was reporting fire in a grass lot.
First - arriving from the Chestertown VFC found fire in grass and woodland that eventually consumed an area estimated at 60’ x 80’. Units from several county fire companies worked together to quickly contain and extinguish the fire.
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For the last several weeks, thanks to the period of drought causing a nearly unprecedented threat of wildfires, the Kent County fire service has been using a different operational procedure when it comes to Outside fires, Field fires, Woods fires, and Farm Vehicle fires. For approximately two decades +/-, Kent County Dispatch has used ProQA Emergency Fire Dispatch, Emergency Medical Dispatch, and Emergency Police Dispatch to screen calls for service, and code these calls for the appropriate level of response priority. The system is structured to ask pointed questions about various call types and recommend the appropriate level of dispatch for that incident. This makes sure calls for service are not being over-dispatched, or under-dispatched.
To the 9-1-1 caller, this system of call screening seemingly delays the dispatch of help because of what seems like endless questions. In reality, the actual dispatch… where pagers are opened / house sirens activated (where appropriate) measures 30-seconds or less. As soon as the 9-1-1 Call Taker identifies the address / location and coded the Call Type, the incident pops up in front of the Radio Dispatcher to be sent out. For instance, typically a small outside fire will only send one fire company, a large outside fire will send multiple fire companies.
With the high level of fire danger, where initially small fires are quickly escalating into very large conflagrations endangering lives and property, your Kent County Fire Chiefs have asked dispatch to immediately dispatch any Outside fires, Field fires, Woods fires, and Farm Vehicle fires as “Large Outside Fires”, no matter how small the fire the caller is describing. This has the advantage of immediately starting at least three fire companies towards the incident. Once the appropriate fire resource has arrived and assessed the problem, the response can be reduced, or increased, as the situation may dictate. The benefit is time gained for mutual aid resources to arrive and assist with fire suppression.
Once the drought has been alleviated and the fire danger returns to a reasonable level, the system of dispatching these types of fires will return to normal.
