![Fire fighters inspect and extinguish a second mulch fire by Alliance Physical Therapy on May 4. [KJ Mushung/Stafford Local News]](https://potomaclocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/050515-BrushFires1-KJMushung_as.jpeg)
[KJ Mushung/Stafford Local News]
Several small brush fires occurred along Garrisonville Road in North Stafford yesterday, two of them in the same place but hours apart.
The first incident was a mulch fire on the side of the building where Alliance Physical Therapy is located in the North Stafford Plaza shopping center at around 3:15 p.m.
Two hours later, the Stafford County Fire and Rescue Department headed to a brushfire at 627 Garrisonville Road, in the area of Barton & Williams School of Dance.
Minutes after that call, another came in for a bush on fire in the parking lot of Home Depot in the Doc Stone Shopping Center. The main concern about this incident was that the burning bush was near parked cars.
Around the same time as the Home Depot parking lot fire, a mulch fire by Alliance Physical Therapy, in the same location as before, was reported.
![A Home Depot employee said this was the bush that fire fighters doused earlier that evening. The ground around it was still wet. [KJ Mushung/Stafford Local News]](https://potomaclocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/050515-BrushFires2-KJMushung_sm.jpg)
[KJ Mushung/Stafford Local News]
Each fire was extinguished in minutes.
Although the causes of these fires have not been determined, Assistant Fire Chief Mark Doyle said that a lot of times in these situations the fire department will find “improper disposal of smoking materials” to be the cause. Since so few businesses allow smoking inside, people will go outside to smoke and then throw the cigarette on the ground. Sometimes the cigarette is burned up in the subsequent fire, so there’s no evidence to find.
