Reno Fire Department crews say they responded to four fires on Tuesday night - and say three of the fires were nuisance fires.

In a tweet, Reno Fire said they suspected the three of them were arson cases, while the fourth fire happened at a homeless camp. Because they say that fire was not near a water supply, they had to use wildland fire procedures to get water from the river. 

"It was quite a ways away from any municipal water source, so we had to use special pumps and draw from the river to put it out," Batt. Chief Seth Williams, Reno Fire Department said.

Reno Fire has since categorized them as nuisance fires, since they said they did not meet the criteria for arson. Williams says some of the homeless people along the river had their trash in shopping carts, and somebody lit them on fire. Firefighters say the fires were small and nobody got hurt, but that these types of incidents can be extremely dangerous.

"Sprinklers are your number one thing for inside your home, secondarily, smoke alarms and none of those tents have smoke alarms," Williams said.

Many homeless use fires for heat and for cooking. Firefighters say that is illegal along the river unless their fires meet certain requirements.

"It's got to be 10 feet away from their tent," Batt. Chief Mike Pilcher, Reno Fire Department said. "It has to have an extinguishing agent, it has to be contained within a three-foot diameter, no greater than that and it has to use approved fuel."

Sgt. Jason Stallcop says he gets 20-30 complaints every week, regarding homeless issues on the river. Camping is illegal on the river through town but he says it is hard to enforce the laws. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that removing homeless people is unconstitutional, saying cities cannot kick homeless out of public areas because it criminalizes homelessness and is cruel and unusual.

"It kind of ties our hands on what we can and can't do as far as enforcement," Stallcop said. "It frustrates my officers, it frustrates the city, it frustrates all the community. Especially, when sometimes they've overpowered the walkways where the community wants to go."

Cory Fisher lives in an RV Park at Rock Park, not far from where the nuisance fires happened. She says the homeless situation along the river is out of hand. She says she has seen syringes, nudity and excess trash.

"We've found syringes in the walking path," Fisher said. "Our dogs could step on them, we can step on them. They can go through your tennis shoes. We've walked up and down here, a couple of us from the park, and have witnessed them throw just bags of trash into the river, shopping carts that they've stolen from Walmart right into the river."

Fisher says she tries to pick up litter around the area but it is hard to keep up with it. She also says safety is a concern along the river path.

"If the sun goes down, we're afraid to take our animals for a walk because you never know what you're going to run into because they fight over drugs and everything else, and it's scary for us," Fisher said.

Stallcop is hopeful the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision is reversed, giving cities the ability to remove chronically homeless from the river. He says Reno Police and other organizations talked to more than 30 homeless campers, Tuesday, offering services but only 14 accepted help.

"A lot of people that are here on the river, they just don't want to use the services that are available or the services have certain rules and guidelines that they don't want to follow," Stallcop said. "A lot of these resources will not allow you to come in if you've got a drug problem, so they've got to go through a treatment first and a lot of them don't want the treatment."

Stallcop says most of the people who camp along the river are chronically homeless, not someone who is down on their luck and are temporarily homeless. He expects most of the homeless campers to leave before winter when it gets too cold and the river flows rise.