Warmer weather brings increased fire risk

Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter

 

The unusually warm temperatures and the high winds of late have had Fire and Emergency Manager for Wheatland County Judy Unsworth, and county fire chiefs keeping an eye out for fires.
Earlier this month, on March 6, fire permits were suspended and on March 13 a fire ban for the county was put into place.
The ban was lifted on March 16 due to snow over that weekend, and has not come back in effect yet.
Last year was a wet year, allowing for all of the grasses to grow well, and now it has been a dry winter, without a lot of snow or rain. With the grass drying and any snow on the ground melted, the strong winds with high temperatures have cured the grass.
‘Then we have a really high fire risk because we’re not in any growth stage, so we (hadn’t) had enough moisture,” said Unsworth.
“Your highest fire risk times are actually not in the middle of summer, you can have absolute fires in the middle of summer. It’s in the spring and the fall when we haven’t had any greening up yet, you get lots of drying.
“In the fall when we’ve taken the crops off and everything is dry and nothing is green any more, so those are your two risks, spring and fall.”
Environment and Sustainable Resources Development (ESRD) sends reports at the start of fire season, which is March 1. They then sent out a report warning different municipalities that the conditions were building up to be perfect for fires.
In the county there were some grass fires that were started, and led to the ban being in place.
“They were started by something else, but the fact we were able to sustain it enough to have a grass fire was an indicator to us that we needed to put on the fire ban,” said Unsworth.
With warmer weather predicted it’s possible a ban could be put back into place for the county. Advisories can be found at either www.wheatlandcounty.ca, or at Albertafirebans.ca, which is run by ESRD and will post all bans across the province.