The Montrose County Commissioners announced yesterday increased fire restrictions in unincorporated Montrose County. The Commissioners implemented stage two fire restrictions which ban all open burning, which includes wood fires and charcoal grills and fireworks. These increased fire restrictions have also prompted Montrose County Sheriff Rick Dunlap to rescind the fireworks display permit for the Montrose Rotary Club. That means there will be no fireworks at Cerise Park this year. The Bureau of Land Management has also implemented stage two restrictions on their lands in Montrose, Gunnison, Ouray, Delta and San Miguel counties. The Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison national forest lands are also under stage two restrictions. The conditions have also prompted DMEA to go into a fire prevention mode, which means minor outages could take longer to fix. The fire prevention mode requires a crew to be sent out to any line faults, which under normal circumstances could be fixed through an automated system. If you have an outage at your house or see anything out of the ordinary with power lines call 1-877-687-3632. The City of Montrose is also asking residents to register their cell phones with the emergency notification system. All land lines in the city are automatically registered with the system, but you must sign up your cell phone to be alerted. More information is available at the City’s website, www.cityofmontrose.org.

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