ORDER-2021-90 : An Order Requesting Information on Safe Use of Fire Pits

Transcript (~30 min @ 57:08)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 57:09 Mark Garipay: Tonight, we have one order before us. It's order 2021-90, an order requesting the information on safe use of fire pits. This order was sponsored by President Cinella, Councilor Migliorelli, and Councilor Grigoraitis. At this time, I will entertain a motion to open or to suspend the rules in order that we can hear from, I believe, Chief Killeener and Captain Gibson regarding this order.

▶ 57:43 Speaker 5: Motion to suspend the rules.

▶ 57:45 Speaker 10: Second.

▶ 57:46 Mark Garipay: Motion to suspend the rules was made by Councilor Grigoraitis, seconded by Councilor McNaught. Ms. Foote, could you please call the roll?

▶ 57:56 Speaker 1: Chair Garipay? Yes. Vice Chair Stewart?

▶ 58:01 Speaker 6: Yes.

▶ 58:04 Speaker 1: Counselor, yes, counselor. Grigoraitis yes, counselor Thomas. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I will make them participants now. Chief Kalina. Captain Gibson.

▶ 58:29 Speaker 9: Chief, can you hear us? Yes, sir.

▶ 58:34 Mark Garipay: All right, and Captain Gibson, I think you're on. I think you're on.

▶ 58:48 Mark Garipay: Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Are you on your phone or.

▶ 58:52 Speaker 8: Yes, I'm on a phone, so there's no video. Yep, that's fine.

▶ 58:55 Mark Garipay: Okay, thank you. Thank you both for being here. And if you'd like to speak to give us some information regarding the order that's before us tonight.

▶ 59:06 Speaker 11: Sure. Good evening. Mr. chairman. Thank you. And members of the council. um can you hear me okay okay several months ago um myself and captain gibson we explored uh if there was ways possible ways that we could um have a best practices guideline put together to allow residents of melrose the ability to have a and use a fire pit in their on their property and uh i believe you all forwarded uh that fire pit guideline and uh we believe that if it's people if they're educated and follow this practice uh they should be able to enjoy especially during this pandemic ongoing pandemic and as we get closer to the warmer months the ability to be outside and socialize um and use the uh fire pit as a as an entertainment uh does anybody have any questions

▶ 1:00:22 Mark Garipay: as as the guideline has been written um i see uh councillor sanella has a has a question okay

▶ 1:00:26 Christopher Cinella: hey chief thank you uh for coming on as well as captain gibson i guess within the guideline first question i have is just is the 20 feet is that uh is that realistic in in the 20 feet i i um

▶ 1:00:40 Speaker 11: believe is a safe distance from a combustible um it it will not be able to be achieved by all residents of melrose um melrose is a dense uh city uh but we believe that uh a majority of

▶ 1:01:01 Christopher Cinella: residents would be able to obtain 20 feet how many calls on average do you go on uh in relation to

▶ 1:01:07 Speaker 11: fire pits so i did some research into our past calls going back to 2015 and calls that were coded for uh illegal burning unauthorized fires is what the code is it was uh hovered around 15 to 20 a year uh with the spike last year of 20 uh 47 and so far this year only one but we anticipate as the warmer months come we'll be running around this it's hard to find out too the other calls that were coded maybe as a good intent call i i didn't have the time to go through uh hundreds of calls to see what the notes said of of the call but sometimes we'll go out on a smoke investigation and it's clearly from a fire pit but we're not able to locate a source so it just gets uh coded as a good intent call but uh we did see a big spike last year and we

▶ 1:02:03 Christopher Cinella: suspect that was uh due to covid is there a dollar amount associated with a call when you have to

▶ 1:02:08 Speaker 11: pack up and i don't know that the cost would be obviously the staff's on duty 24 7 the cost would be the fuel cost of uh starting the apparatus and responding uh and we don't respond uh to these areas um with lights and sirens for these types of calls we'll just meander up to the the area of the complaint and see what we can find out it's not a priority call i guess what's what's

▶ 1:02:32 Christopher Cinella: difficult for some of us i mean we we get it from both sides where some of the communities say say, what's the big deal? This is the way it's been. Some are just unclear around what can you, can you not do? We've had other constituents that have issues, you know, health wise. So I guess it's a matter of how do you, how do you make everybody happy? But it is what

▶ 1:03:00 Speaker 11: it is. But yeah, I don't think you can make everybody happy, unfortunately. I guess within

▶ 1:03:04 Christopher Cinella: these um fire pit guidelines part of this is if you do have a neighbor that wants it shut down

▶ 1:03:17 Speaker 11: that's something that will be enforced if well the fire department would determine if there's a hazard you know if someone according to my guidelines here if they were operating within these guidelines there'd be no need to shut it down unless they were using say wet wood which would then create excessive smoke but if they're using a clean dry wood it should be hardly any smoke at

▶ 1:03:49 Jen Grigoraitis: all yeah thank you uh council rigoritis thank you chairman Garipay and thank you chief and captain for being here tonight and also for a really productive conversation some weeks ago about this just to kind of back up a little bit i know the intent of having you all come before us was really to try to provide um a platform to get this information out to the public with our robust viewing audience um because i think there is a lot of confusion around what folks can and can't do or what they should and shouldn't do do you have hot dogs nearby is propane okay is it on your deck is that a bad idea so i think it was really to just try to provide some clarity from the fire department which my understanding is you have the purview to put these regulations um in place for Melrose so that folks who do want to follow best practices know what those are so could you talk a little bit about the difference between like a propane fire pit and a regular wood burning one and from a safety perspective and how you would address those sure thank you um

▶ 1:04:53 Speaker 11: The propane is not a permanent device. It's to be operated in accordance with manufacturer's specifications, as long as it stays under 42 pounds of propane. Propane should always be used at grade. It should never be used on an elevated platform because propane is heavier than air.

▶ 1:05:23 Speaker 11: So, we cannot even regulate, I don't believe, a propane fire pit as long as they're using it in accordance with their manufacturer's specifications. As far as the wood burning fire pits, I know some people in the past we've gone on calls where they've had clay pot chimineers They've had those on decks, whether they be wooden decks or the treks, fake wood there. That's not a good practice because you are putting a fire onto a structure. This guideline that's in front of us would eliminate that, and that would have to be then put out right away. We would have come across that type of situation. Captain Gibson, he's researched the laws, has had conversations with the marshal on this as he deals with most of the complaints of people calling uh and inquiring why can't they have one versus you know why should i have one so

▶ 1:06:33 Speaker 8: cap if you want to jump in on this yeah i mean with the guidelines that you're putting forward just relax the way we're enforcing these type of fires right now because outdoor cooking is allowed year-round in all communities in Massachusetts under the state law and a cooking fire as you put in your thing is three three feet in diameter by two feet tall so those are legal anyway so what we're doing here is just relaxing the way we enforce it going forward

▶ 1:07:10 Speaker 11: So, I hope that was able to answer your question.

▶ 1:07:13 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you. Yeah, that's helpful. I think the understanding that there's some state law, and then we have the ability to kind of do some refinement at the community level is really helpful. Thank you.

▶ 1:07:31 Cory Thomas: Councilor Thomas. Thank you Mr. Chairman, Chief Kalina and Catherine Gibson. Thank you both very much for being here. Thank you as well for putting together the fire pick guidelines that we received. They're very comprehensive. um and it's an easy um guide to follow uh especially for people at home um one of the things that you put on there towards the bottom um fire pits recreational fires they're not incinerators it's pretty obvious um when people are using these to burn leaves is that correct

▶ 1:08:01 Speaker 11: yes uh leaves would uh we're actually never allowed in uh malrose and that's under the open burning laws and it's not a community that has this space where you would need then 70 feet because you wouldn't have a small fire you could have actually a big fire but leaves are always intended for brush twigs not tree

▶ 1:08:26 Cory Thomas: stumps not leaves right and I just want to bring that point back up if people get comfortable using these fire pits we don't want them to turn this into you you know, burning leaves in the fall or yard brush in the springtime during cleanups, you know, and that's something that, you know, we want the fire department, obviously, to put a stop to

▶ 1:08:55 Cory Thomas: if it does get out of hand. That's correct. All right. Chief, I just want to, while we had the opportunity, I just want to thank you and the fire department for going above and beyond during this pandemic for over a year now. You guys have been, you know, each call has put you guys at So, thank you all for very much for everything that you do and Captain Gibson. Thank you for continued efforts and everything you're doing professionally and damage control. Sometimes with some of the calls, you can get up and 7 during some blasting up there. So, thank you for being here and all the information and everything you guys do day in and day out.

▶ 1:09:27 Speaker 11: Thank you for your kind words. Yeah, thank you.

▶ 1:09:30 Speaker 6: Absolutely, yes. Thanks.

▶ 1:09:32 Mark Garipay: Thank you, Councilor Thomas. Councilor McNaught.

▶ 1:09:36 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Captain, for being here. Just had a couple of quick questions. I was curious when you said that these calls get logged, the 47 that we had in the last year, do fires where someone's burning leaves or brush versus someone who's got a fire pit going, Do they get logged differently or are they logged the same?

▶ 1:10:02 Speaker 11: I can't remember the last time I went on a call for fire involving leaves other than up in the woods. Most of the fires that we're coming across are people having a recreational fire pit in their backyard and someone has complained and called us to the area. yeah that's what i was wondering and they did and they just but they believe that the fire is illegal like there's no so you know again if we were to allow it then it wouldn't become an illegal fire would be you know a proper use right right that's what i was wondering is

▶ 1:10:39 Jeff McNaught: are these mostly the calls that you get which don't thankfully don't sound like many are they mostly just neighbors who are upset about a fire next door on their street uh some of them are uh

▶ 1:10:52 Speaker 11: Could be concerned, but some of them, they might be looking up the street to 2 houses up and see a flame. And so they're, they're just calling because they see a fire and they, they don't see what's on fire. Right safe to be sorry then. Sorry.

▶ 1:11:10 Jeff McNaught: That's right. Certainly. Um, and I, and I, uh. I know we're not in the risk-free business. You're not in the risk-free business, so to echo what Councilor Thomas said, thank you for what you all do every day. We're lucky that we have brave people such as you to go before us in these situations. But the last question I had was, have there been any fires that we know of that have been caused by fire pits to other combustibles such as a fence or anything else not that not to my knowledge

▶ 1:11:54 Speaker 11: okay again good to hear just i think we have more fires uh caused by a discarded cigarette into a

▶ 1:12:04 Jeff McNaught: mulch bed than than from a fire pit right right thank you that that's all i had thank you very

▶ 1:12:15 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you very much. Welcome. Thank you. Council. I'm not a counselor. McMaster. Thank you. Mr chairman. I'm a non voting member of this committee, but you'd have a question for chief Kalina or captain Gibson. Thank you both for being here. Where does the discretion exist legally to relax? The restrictions that you referenced, I read the memo, you know, I know there's the state fire marshal, there's a mass department of environmental protection. There's none of that was referenced in the memo. So.

▶ 1:12:50 Speaker 4: Where does that legal discretion exist?

▶ 1:12:53 Speaker 11: Talk on this chief. Sure. Go ahead. Okay. Um.

▶ 1:12:56 Speaker 8: I have a memo from the state fire Marshall. That basically says that these devices are not. Regulated under chapter 148. 527, or the air pollution acts that we use. As our codes, they kind of fall into a gray area. and so it's hard to regulate these type of things. We're just going off the law that we have where we can shut down any fire that's causing a nuisance or a hazard. That's what we can regulate.

▶ 1:13:40 Shawn M. MacMaster: How do we distinguish what's open burning and what's not open burning? Because open burning would fall under a different area, obviously. That's 75 yards as you referenced, Chief. I think that's under the MAS DEP CMR. I guess my question is, if you have a fire pit and your fire pit has a cover on it, is that not open-burning? If it doesn't have the cover, would that be open-burning?

▶ 1:14:10 Speaker 11: Thank you. CMR 310, CMR 7 and 7.07 deal with the open-burning. my understanding of open burning is not in a contained vessel or stones, bricks around it, it's just open and it's subject to wind coming through and taking embers. A fire pit is a confined fire in what we would determine a safe vessel of three feet and that's the difference between an open and a controlled fire pit and then you know there's some other cool stuff out in the market I don't know if you've seen the solo fire pit you know where it completely burns it's a smoke-free

▶ 1:15:10 Speaker 11: wood burning fire pit pretty ingenious actually but so the like the captain

▶ 1:15:18 Speaker 11: said, we can't regulate and enforce a law that's not enforceable by us. The only way we can enforce is the nuisance of the smoke or if 148, Section 5 would allow us to shut down, if we wanted someone's backyard investigating a smoke complaint, and they would say 10 feet of a garage or five feet of a garage, and we thought that would likely lead to a fire. We have the ability to shut them down under the law.

▶ 1:15:55 Shawn M. MacMaster: Putting the safety risk aside, the health risk of smoke, inhalation, is that something that would be enforced by the fire department, or would that be the Board of Health Director?

▶ 1:16:11 Speaker 11: My understanding could be enforced by the fire department.

▶ 1:16:16 Shawn M. MacMaster: Okay. Then my only other question, Chief, as you mentioned, leaves. leaves are naturally, people tend to think of them as open burning. Just because there's probably people at home wondering about this, what about burning leaves in a burn barrel with a cover?

▶ 1:16:33 Speaker 11: Never. Burning leaves is not allowed, not permitted. One, it creates a tremendous amount of smoke, but then as the leaves break down, they do fly away in potential firebrands.

▶ 1:16:48 Speaker 11: I'm sorry, you got me without that, council?

▶ 1:16:53 Speaker 4: Thank you chief and thank you for being here.

▶ 1:16:55 Speaker 11: Yeah, thank you. Vice chair Stewart.

▶ 1:17:02 Robb Stewart: Thank you Mr. chair and thank you chief and captain for for being here. I do appreciate your guidelines of being specific. I do. I get a little hung up on the 2nd bullet though, when you say all fires must be constantly attended. by a competent person until it's distinguished. Confidence is very much a judgment call and you could or could not include sobriety in that. I think one of the big concerns that I've seen in my neighborhood that's been expressed to me by constituents is that, as you had alluded to earlier, Chief, you know, these are social events typically happening on the weekend, typically people sitting around drinking one or several or perhaps many alcoholic beverages. And when that happens, that competency level drops significantly and can range anything from putting the wrong kind of material on the fire, such as newspaper, which I've seen, which you see the embers floating up in the sky to people going inside for 10 to 15 minutes, leaving the fire unattended to people stumbling. So that competency to me is a large concern. How

▶ 1:18:35 Speaker 11: do you address that? Again, it's a guideline to remind not everybody sitting around a fire pit might be drinking some could be you know not drinking and that would be a competent adult but I don't disagree with you that alcohol changes the

▶ 1:18:58 Robb Stewart: complexity of it so we're not sure how we I'm sorry you broke up there so we're

▶ 1:19:05 Robb Stewart: not sure how we deal with that is what I do correct okay all right thank you

▶ 1:19:13 Robb Stewart: Chief, thank you, Captain. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

▶ 1:19:21 Mark Garipay: That's everyone I had in the queue. Does anyone else have any? I'm sorry. Councilor Eccles and then-

▶ 1:19:31 Jack Eccles: Thank you, Mr. Chair. A few questions. Thank you, Chief Galina and Captain Gibson for being here. I was just wondering maybe for our residents that are not frequent viewers of city council meetings, is there somewhere that they can find these guidelines on their own? Is it possible that we could put these on the city website or on the fire department section? I know that that would be the first place I would go. Perhaps it can save you a few calls throughout the year too if these are available online.

▶ 1:20:02 Speaker 11: Most definitely, we could put it on the city's website as well as the fire department.

▶ 1:20:07 Jack Eccles: That'd be awesome. Then my other question is, this may not be something that you've encountered, but if there is a repeat offender, is there a citation process? Have you ever encountered that with people who are pushing the line or that you've had to respond to multiple times?

▶ 1:20:25 Speaker 11: We can't enforce it because we do have non-criminal citations, but where we're not actually going to be citing a particular law, we wouldn't be able to do that. I don't know how to handle that one. If we walk there five or six times and it's the same story time and time again. I don't know if there's a, I don't think it's even illegal. I don't know how we would handle it. Gotcha. Well, it seems like that hasn't been a problem from what I've heard. Anyway, so.

▶ 1:20:57 Jack Eccles: Well, thank you both from here. Appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Chair.

▶ 1:21:06 Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:21:09 Leila Migliorelli: Thank you, Chief Kalina and Captain Gibson. I had co-filed this order along with President Snell and Councilor Grigoraitis because of some of the questions that we've got, I'm pretty much going to restate with somewhat what others have said, but I think there's been a lot of confusion around whether there's already an existing ordinance prohibiting fire pits. I think that's the thing I most often hear. well there's an ordinance we can we change the ordinance or um can we stop fire pits from happening because there is an ordinance so it's helpful to have this discussion to sort of clarify that point there is no ordinance we're sort of just subject to state law um but then these guidelines i think are helpful for residents to to know how to do these things safely um and it's something that i i mean i think i know i've gotten a lot of questions either In writing, or just, you know, in chatting with people about what the rules are. So, thank you so much for putting this together for posting on the website and making it available to the public.

▶ 1:22:08 Speaker 11: My pleasure, thank you. Yeah.

▶ 1:22:13 Mark Garipay: Well, do any of the counselors have any questions?

▶ 1:22:19 Mark Garipay: Seeing no other questions, what's the will of the committee?

▶ 1:22:26 Speaker 5: Motion to place on file 2nd.

▶ 1:22:30 Mark Garipay: Motion to place the order on file order 2020 dash 2021 dash 90 by councilor seconded by. Counselor Thomas discussion.

▶ 1:22:49 Robb Stewart: Thank you Mr. chair. I just want to make a few points about my. Objection to this, I believe that fires in general are inherently more dangerous. I think that this, while there are a number of people that I'm sure will be very careful and responsible, I think there's a segment that are not, and I've seen it, and it concerns me. The reason why we typically dissuade fire pits, open fires, and so forth is they're inherently more dangerous. You know, and some of the reasons why fire pits are put together by residents is in a party atmosphere where there can be irresponsible measures.

▶ 1:23:39 Robb Stewart: And I just, I feel as though when we relax or I don't want to use the word encourage because I do not believe that's what's going on here. but relaxing some of the um the ways that people can use uh fires um particularly uh in certain wards and neighborhoods like a lot of the neighborhoods within ward three where the house is very close together i think it would be very difficult to get 20 feet from any house without being like smack dab in the middle of the street um and i think this could lead to more issues and all it's going to take is is one uh bad situation that happens and then i think

▶ 1:24:34 Robb Stewart: it's i would feel very responsible if that one situation happened and i'm not i cannot support that so I and I just I feel like you know we're in a situation because of COVID that um you know we're trying to find some uh something for people to do and fire pits seem like it's it's the right thing to do but I don't think this is the right way to go about doing this um I feel like you know when COVID first started and there were less cars on the road people were speeding right so but we're but we're not going to raise this meeting with me to accommodate for that. I do not feel comfortable with this and I'm going to have trouble supporting it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

▶ 1:25:23 Mark Garipay: Councilor, can we go right?

▶ 1:25:27 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just on discussion, just to clarify, the regulations aren't up for a vote as part of this order. This was an entirely informational order, my understanding from the chief and the captain and the city solicitor, that the ability to put down these regulations lies under the purview of the administration and our intent as the makers of the order was just to have an opportunity to have the chief and the captain come before us to explain the regulations and clarify some of the confusion so just um to make sure that we're all on the same page about what we're motioning to place on file it was just the actual order bringing the chief and the captain before us tonight thank you thank you

▶ 1:26:07 Mark Garipay: Thank you for the clarification, Councilor Grigoraitis. So we have a motion to recommend to place this on file by Councilor Grigoraitis, seconded by Councilor Sineller. Ms. Foote, can you please call the roll?

▶ 1:26:24 Speaker 9: Mr. Garapage? Yes.

▶ 1:26:27 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Stewart?

▶ 1:26:29 Speaker 6: No.

▶ 1:26:31 Speaker 1: Councilor McNaught? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Thomas?

▶ 1:26:43 Speaker 1: Yes. President Sinella? Yes. Five yes.

▶ 1:26:51 Mark Garipay: That order is recommended to be placed on file and will go to the full council. Thank you, Chief Kalahner, and thank you, Captain Gibson. Always great to hear from both of you. Thank you for being here tonight. That concludes our agenda for tonight. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.