Just wanted to publicly say thank you to Steven and April Trull and all of the other people who stop to help put out a brush fire on Rte 5. At approximately 6:55 pm I received a call from my Italian exchange student that they were ready to be picked up from the theater. I had just turned on to Rte 5 from Wilcox Neck Road in Charles City and immediately could see that something was on fire. At first site, it appeared to be a vehicle but as I got closer, I could see it was a brush fire on the left side of the road. There were several people trying to contain the fire. They were using their bottled drinking water to dose the outer most flames and stomping the embers to put them out. I stopped to ask if the fire department had been alerted and they said it had but were worried that they would not get there before the fire got out of hand. The Trulls had arrived on the scene not long after the fire started. I had just turned around to go home and get a fire extinguisher when I remembered that I had 50 bottles of water in the back of my car along with some beach towels. We pulled off and opened the rear hatch and everyone began grabbing water. Another family in a white pickup truck stopped and emptied their cooler of ice water on it. My son Hunter Newsom was quick and efficient with dosing the red embers with water. After we deployed the beach towels and the fire was under control quickly.

I truly want to thank all of those people who stopped to help. I live in those woods. If the fire had been allowed to reach the tree line, in this season of drought, who knows how difficult it would have been to contain. The volunteer fire department arrived on the scene to finalize the flame fatality with a large dose of water.

If this fire was started accidently, I would beg for more attention to smokers throwing there stubs out the window. If it was intentionally set