.jpg)
MCP photo/Pentwater Fire Chief Johnathan Hughart and Riverton Township Fire Chief Joe Cooper (at left).
By Allison Scarbrough, News Editor
BENONA TOWNSHIP, Oceana County — Emergency response leaders, dune community leaders and residents from Oceana and Mason counties met Thursday, June 12, at the Little Sable Point Stone Church to discuss ways to alleviate challenges firefighters and other first responders face when handling an emergency in a Limited Access Dune Community.
A Limited Access Dune Community (LADC) typically is a lakeshore community that has a high percentage of seasonal residents; offers just one or two ways in or out of the community — some often have dead-end roads; has abundant natural fuels, such as dune grass and needle cast; poor or no public safety radio, mobile device and internet coverage; narrow, winding and hilly roads; and exist in critical dune areas.
MCP photo/Forest Fire Supervisor Ray Cole of the Michigan DNR speaks to the audience.
“It’s great to see so many different dune communities here,” said Garry McKeen, who owns a home in the Little Point Sable Association — just down the road from the meeting venue. McKeen worked with Mason-Oceana 911 Director Ray Hasil to organize the annual meeting.
Presentations were made by Forest Fire Supervisor Ray Cole of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Mason County’s Riverton Township Fire Department Chief Joe Cooper and Oceana County’s Pentwater Fire Department Chief Johnathan Hughart.
“There are ways to improve your readiness for emergencies,” said Hasil, who recently retired from the Pentwater Fire Department, where he served as assistant fire chief. “These little pockets of communities make it a challenge for fire coverage,” said Hasil, adding that the lack of cell service creates “kind of a black hole for radio communications.”
MCP photo/Mason-Oceana 911 Director Ray Hasil begins the meeting.
Hasil encouraged the audience to take advantage of the 911 service’s address refrigerator magnet program, which is aimed at ensuring the 911 caller knows the home’s address. This vital emergency information is not often known by summer visitors when they make 911 calls.
“A lot of these communities have only one way in,” said Cole. “They’re one-lane seasonal roads. It’s very hard to get equipment into them. Topography also plays a big factor in these dunes.”
“Ambulances also have trouble accessing these roads,” added Hasil. “We’ll bring an engine and drive it right down there with you to show the issues,” he said to the lakeshore community leaders and residents.
Oceana County Emergency Manager Troy Maloney said dead-end roads substantially increase response time. “Create a separate egress and ingress — I highly encourage it. “Once those trucks come in, you guys are trapped — unless you can get down to the beach. It creates a serious problem for all of us. We can help you work on that.”
MCP photo/Little Sable Point Association resident Garry McKeen displays a fire extinguisher while addressing the audience.
With Airbnb accommodations on the rise — particularly in LADCs, people new to the area often find themselves in unfamiliar situations during emergencies. “They don’t understand the volatility of the dune grass,” said Cole.
“Make sure you clean your gutters and roofs,” he said. Leaves and other debris add fuel to the fire. “Keep everything raked and away from the homes,” added Cooper.
During the summer, bonfires and fireworks are often the cause of lakeshore fires, Cole said. “Ninety percent are human-caused, and 60-70 percent are campfires on the beaches. Most of the time it’s people burning on the beach.” The beach fires usually ignite one or two days after the beach gathering ends.
Fire chiefs Cooper and Hughart discussed the dune fire that led to a house fire just 10 days ago in Mason County’s Summit Township.
“It spread within minutes,” said Cooper.
With the narrow road, “you could get one truck in and one truck out,” said Hughart. “We couldn’t dump a bunch of water at a time. It is really hard in these communities, because the roads are so narrow. We need trucks that can drive past each other — like a two-way street — to get a good water supply. All that this amounts to is time and effort. When we use time, it means the fire is getting that much bigger.”
In February of 2024, the Pentwater Fire Department performed a joint exercise in the area with the Riverton Township Fire Department. The exercise paid off when combating the fire last week. “By preplanning, it made this incident go smoothly in the midst of the chaos. By preplanning, we were able to get this fire under control,” said Hughart.
Incorrect road and street names create another obstacle for first responders in LADCs. “There were a lot of little roads that we didn’t know existed,” said Mason-Oceana 911 Deputy Director Todd Myers. “We’ve been adding them to our mapping system.”
Wide-format maps are available from Mason-Oceana 911 free of charge in order to make additions and corrections to road and street names. If you would like a map of your community, Contact Myers at tmyers@mason-oceana911.org or call 231-869-7911.
“Forms for gates and key codes are important for us to know,” said Myers. That data can also be entered into the 911 system. “We don’t want to find that out after the fact.” Myers also advised dune community members to “coordinate evacuation plans with the fire departments. “That’s the way associations can plan.”
A house fire in Silver Lake Monday was likely caused by an e-battery charging, said Sgt. Mike Fillips, who is lead fire investigator for the Oceana County Sheriff’s Office as well as the marine officer. “We’re going to have more and more of these as they are becoming more prevalent,” said Fillips. He urged residents to charge the batteries outside and not indoors. “It gets out of control very quickly. Several fires I’ve investigated have turned out to be battery fires.”
The group plans to have a meeting next spring for ongoing communications between dune community leaders and residents and emergency response leaders in an effort to continue improving emergency response in these challenging communities.
______________________
Please Support Local News
Receive daily MCP and OCP news briefings along with email news alerts for $10 a month. Your contribution will help us to continue to provide you with free local news.
Payment can be made monthly via credit card, bank account, PayPal or Venmo through recurring email invoicing. These payments can be set up for autopay each month.
To sign up, email editor@mediagroup31.com. In the subject line write: Subscription. Please supply your name, email address, mailing address, and phone number (indicate cell phone). We will not share your information with any outside sources. For more than one email address in a household, the cost is $15 per month per email address.
Alternative methods:
- We can send you an invoice for a yearly payment of $120, which you can conveniently pay online or by check. If you are interested in this method, please email editor@mediagroup31.com and we can sign you up. You can also mail a yearly check for $120 to Media Group 31, PO Box 21, Scottville, MI 49454 (please include your email address).
Payment must be made in advance prior to subscription activation.
We appreciate all our readers regardless of whether they choose to continue to access our service for free or with a monthly financial support.
_____
This story and original photography are copyrighted © 2025, all rights reserved by Media Group 31, LLC, PO Box 21, Scottville, MI 49454. No portion of this story or images may be reproduced in any way, including print or broadcast, without expressed written consent.
As the services of Media Group 31, LLC are news services, the information posted within the sites are archivable for public record and historical posterity. For this reason it is the policy and practice of this company to not delete postings. It is the editor’s discretion to update or edit a story when/if new information becomes available. This may be done by editing the posted story or posting a new “follow-up” story. Media Group 31, LLC or any of its agents have the right to make any changes to this policy. Refer to Use Policy for more information.
.png)
