SCHUYLKILL HAVEN - A borough man told the borough council Wednesday how he was displeased with two women allegedly burning wood in a container Tuesday near his house.
Russell Stahler Jr., 427 E. Main St., said that he was concerned because the women were drunk and they had the fire going with 16- to 18-inch logs. He put out the fire with a garden hose before the police arrived to investigate.
"People don't like the smoke. They don't like the fire. They don't want the hazard," Stahler told the council. "The smoke in my house didn't clear out until this morning and the stink and the smell ... Now I want to know what the policy is and I would like to know what can be done about this because if I can burn a fire in my backyard, I'm going down and I'm going to build me a fireplace."
Council President Marlin Berger Jr. said he should speak with the code enforcement officer.
"I tried to talk to the code enforcement officer. And do you know what they told me? They told me to talk to the fire department," he said.
Borough Manager Scott Graver said the borough code officer is not in about 4:35 p.m. when the burning allegedly took place.
"The policy is that they would call the police department," he said.
Police Chief Jeffrey Walcott said fires like he described "are very infrequent" but when they get a complaint, they investigate it. Police did not hear anything about the people drinking, according to Walcott.
"All I heard was it was a small fire that was contained in some kind of thing you by at Lowe's. And he (the officer) didn't feel it was that big of a deal because there was a screen on the top of it," Walcott said. "I said it doesn't matter the burning ordinance the way I know it to be states that you can't have any type of open burning and if it generates a complaint they have to investigate it."
Borough solicitor Mark Semanchik said municipalities can adopt their own ordinances. Stahler had talked about information that he found online from a state website.
Graver said open burning was not allowed in the borough; he did not have a copy of the ordinance with him to say if there were exceptions.
In other business, council member Jerry Bowman said a resident donated money to the borough that will be used to purchase a tree at Bubeck Park. The tree has not been selected yet.
