Fire Department picnic ends in riot

What started as a family event ended as a minor riot. The Platteville, WI, volunteer fire department had their anual summer picnic this weekend. That picnic ended with millions of dollars in damage and a city in shock.

According to police reports spouses of firefighters became upset when the Volunteer Fire Department was paged out. A business in town was on fire. The police reports quote statements made by spouses arrested in this incident.

“This is the fifth picnic in a row ruined by a fire.”

Apparently soon after the firefighters left the wife of an assistant fire chief joked about takeing up a collection to buy a keg of beer. Someone else took the joke seriously and did start a collection.

In just a few minutes they had collected enough money to buy five (5) barrels of Bush Light beer.

Speaking on a condition of anonymity one person said she “knew trouble was going to happen when all that beer showed up.”

Things started off innocent enough. But as the scorned spouses went from buzzed to drunk things turned ugly. As one firefighter’s wife described it “we were laughing. Joking about stupid things our husbands do. Then we started to bitch about fire pagers going off. Next thing you know someone said we should start a fire that would bring our husbands back to the park.”

The police reports describe how the pavilion at Platteville’s Memorial park was set on fire. Apparently some of the drunker spouses did not feel the pavilion was a big enough fire. A group of three women walked to street and started to light cars on fire.

Others joined these three and soon a mob formed. Eventually a house across the street was also set ablaze.

The group started to chant “come put out our fires”. The group started to march from the park in the direction of the firehouse. Cars, decks, swingsets, trees, even homes were set on fire.

Mutual aid was called for and firefighters from 8 other local departments were needed to bring all the fires under control. It also took deputies from the sheriff’s office to aid the city police in getting the mob ended.

The district attorney has not filled charges yet. Police are still investigating and expect that criminal charges could be filed next week.