Beltsville Contributes To One Of The Busiest Days In PGFD's History

Feb 19 - 06:00 hrs 8400 block of Potomac Avenue. The first major call that they was called out was for a house fire in College Park. The housed was being used by University Of Maryland, College Park students. The house was fully involved meaning every single part of the house was on fire. Units cleared around 08:30 hrs from this house fire.

Around 11:30 hrs Van Dussen Road in the area of I-95 a 30 foot mulch pile caught fire and due to high winds the fire spreaded more than 1 mile causing over 1 million dollars in damage. The reason the firefighters took so much time to put out the fire was because the fire kept moving towards their direction. This brush fire was 15 acres and was a 2 alarm hazmat box. This also caused I-95 to be shut down for about 4 hours.

At 13:56 hrs, Beltsville Truck 831 was dispatch to the Laurel Mall, 14700 Baltimore Avenue. For a fire in the Burlington Coat Factory this fire was also a 2 alarm box. Units cleared later.

Mutual Aid was needed from these following County's : St Mary's County MD, Calvert County MD, Charles County MD, Anne Arundel County MD, Montgomery County MD, Baltimore city MD, Arlington County VA, Alexandria City, Fairfax County VA, Washington DC, Carroll County MD, Caroline County MD, Queen Anne County MD, Andrews Air Force Base, BWI Airport, and Natural resources. All Prince George's County Firefighters were called back to duty due to multiple other house fires around the county. The last time all Firefighters were all called back to duty was Sept.11th.2001 and thats kinda obvious why. The Prince George's County Public Safety Communications handled 821 calls, an average day would be 350 calls a day, and thats just the Fire Department side of the Public Safety.