The fire department fielded nearly twice as many calls as usual over the holiday weekend, with three fires reported and multiple aid calls.

“I am very happy we staffed up for it,” said George Brown, interim acting fire chief at Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR).

From Friday through Sunday, Brown said, the department responded to 21 calls, eight on Friday, four on Saturday and nine on Sunday. With the dry conditions, many on Vashon were concerned about fire, and Brown added staff and volunteers to weekend shifts and urged locals to forgo personal fireworks. Not everyone complied, however, and fireworks caused two brush fires, he said, one on Cemetery Road and one on the north end, both growing to about 10,000 square feet.

“We got there quick and kept them from getting big,” he added.

One of the fires was started by young people who were working to put the fire out when the fire crew arrived, he noted, but officials don’t yet know who started the other.

A variety of medical calls, including some that were heat-related, came in, but there were no fireworks-related injuries. Brown attributed some of the increase in calls to the influx of visitors for the holiday weekend.

“When you increase our population, you increase our risk,” he said.

With calls not to use fireworks coming from a variety of officials, including the governor, sales were down about 40 percent at the Vashon Fireworks Company, according to Gabriel Felix, who owns the fireworks stand.

“If you are going to have a bad year, you want it to be for the right reasons,” Felix said on Monday. “People were making good choices. I appreciate they were doing that and using good judgement to have a safe Fourth of July.”

Felix, who designs heart monitors professionally and has said he brings fireworks to the island because he’s interested in the science behind them, noted he and his staff at the stand stressed caution this year.

“We really pushed fireworks safety in terms of prevention with each customer,” he said. “It was too dry; if you were not on the beach, you were being dangerous.”

While his “die hard” customers bought fireworks this year, he added, he believes more conservative customers did not. This year he sold only 30 packs of quiet fireworks, he noted, compared to 140 last year.

In the off-season, Felix stores his unsold fireworks in a special storage facility in Tacoma. This year storage fees will be high, he noted, but the lack of sales will not create a hardship for him — as it does for those who rely on fireworks sales for income.

“I will keep designing heart monitors for my real job,” he said, “and it will be OK.”

Unrelated to the holiday, VIFR responded to a house fire on Westside Highway late in the afternoon on Sunday. The residents of the home reported smoke coming through the vents, and by the time firefighters arrived, Brown said, smoke was coming out of the eaves.

“That is the worst kind of fire,” he added. “When you cannot see it, you’ve got to go find it.”

With the help of a thermal imaging camera, responders found the source was old wiring that had shorted out and burned through the joists. It took  about an hour for the VIFR crew to find the source of the fire and get it under control.

“It is amazing the house did not just take off,” Brown said. “They were fortunate it was daylight and they could see the smoke.”