Sigh, more beach trash

I actually took this photo two weeks ago. I had Riley down for an early morning walk and passed the site of a beach fire from the night before. We see lots of beach fires in the summer. Generally, although they are illegal on the beach, most people use common sense and just burn firewood, and clean up any trash they left behind after.

Unfortunately, not all people are as considerate and tend to think of the beach as "self cleaning." What you see here are the two pallets they didn't burn, and part of the remains of one they did burn. The one that was burned was partially buried in the sand.

After I got Riley home, I grabbed a rake, a bucket, some gloves, and some rope. More on the rope later. I walked back to the spot and pulled the two unburned pallets out of the way, and started digging out the partially burned one. As you know (or maybe you don't!) pallets are assembled with nails. What happens to the nails when you burn a pallet? They come out. In this case, they came out all over the beach. Worse, the partially burned parts of pallet had nails sticking out in all directions, just ready for somebody to hurt themselves on.

I brought the rope because I thought I might have to drag both pallets down the beach. I decided it was just easier to drag them without, so, I stood around looking for somebody to recruit. I enlisted a nice Australian man who helped me drag one of the pallets from 19th street to the 24th street parking lot. It was a good workout, and I was thankful for his help so I didn't have to make two trips. I stacked them by a trash can hoping a park aid would haul them away during the day.

Back at the fire site, I raked through the sand the best I could, picking out the burned pieces with nails & pulling loose nails out of the sand. The culprits had left some unburned firewood in a box, so I dumped it out & put the larger burned pieces in the box, which I hauled home and put in our trash can.

On Monday, I emailed Bruce Gibson, out supervisor, and later than day, I got a response. He confirmed that fires on our beach are illegal and mentioned that complaints like mine are getting more common. He also answered a question I had which is "why are there no signs at the beach accesses indicating fires are illegal?" His answer was that he didn't know, and his legislative aid would contact me on Thursday. She did, and forwarded an inquiry along to somebody at state parks. I've been told that if I don't hear back by August 28th to nudge her and get the status.

We'll see where it goes, and I feel good for having made the effort. What I really hope is that the people who burned the pallets were staying in the house right above the fire site and were shamed by watching me clean it up. I know, wishful thinking, but I can hope, can't I?