SEATAC, Wash. — A high school rugby team jumped into action when a hillside above their practice field caught fire. Firefighters are saying these boys prevented the situation from being much worse.
The fire started just before 4 p.m. on Monday at the Pat Ryan Memorial Field in SeaTac.
The West Ronins 7’s rugby team was practicing for an upcoming tournament when they said someone tossed a firecracker toward them. They weren’t hurt, but the hillside caught fire.
The fire department says they may have prevented a catastrophe.
The black patch where this happened is still visible, surrounded by vegetation that could have gone up in flames, too.
KIRO 7 met these three members of the West Ronins 7’s Rugby Team a day after the fire.
“I mean, it started raging,” said Dylan Miller. “Once we got up the hill, the whole area up there was on fire. It’s super warm up there. I thought I was going to get burned. I don’t know. I started grabbing branches and started slapping it. That’s how bad it got.”
They used what they could to put it out.
“He (teammate Beckett Wilson) brought water up,” said Miller. “But the water bottle ran out.”
I run up, right, and I get up there and I start spraying the water. And it’s not doing enough, so, I take off the cap. And I fully put out all my water but, the fire is just going around it and evaporating it. So, it had no effect," Wilson said.
Meanwhile, teammate Chet Smith was trying to find a couple of teens who he believed threw the fireworks.
“As soon as we saw the kid riding on the bike...as soon as we saw him, we ran after him,” Smith said.
Puget Sound Regional firefighters applauded their quick action.
“The fire was about 50 feet by 50 feet at the point in time,” said Division Chief Pat Pawlak, with Puget Sound Regional Fire. “The original call was about a 10-foot diameter fire. So, you can see how quickly that grew. This rugby team, these players, they did a great job as far as slowing and stopping the progress of this fire so we could come in and extinguish it.”
Still, the teens are upset that this happened at all.
“We should not have to bear the burden of people throwing fireworks on our field,” said Wilson. “People have to have better morals and know you can’t just throw fireworks into anyplace you want.”
Pawlak says every fire department in the region has been busy because of this hot, dry weather.
He says even the rain forecast for Wednesday won’t make much of a dent.
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