Wildfires: what to know

By Michael Carter

clydenews@bizwoh.rr.com

Each year in Ohio on aver­age of 1,000 wild­fires burn 4,000 to 6,000 acres of for­est, crops and grass­lands, accord­ing to the Ohio Depart­ment of National Resources.

In a typ­i­cal year, it is esti­mated that more than 15,000 wild­fires are encoun­tered statewide. These fires are mostly caused by care­less burning.

“I would say that 90 per­cent of the grass fires we see are caused by peo­ple who are open burn­ing,” said Fire Chief Greg Lowe from the Green Springs Rural Vol­un­teer Fire Depart­ment in Seneca County. His group of 40 plus vol­un­teers cover 76 square miles of mostly farm land and rural homes.

“Peo­ple are just not care­ful enough when they burn and some­times are not pay­ing atten­tion to their con­di­tions. Things like wind and the amount of rain are key fac­tors, but the bot­tom line is Ohio does have a ‘No’ open burn law, not a lot of peo­ple real­ize that.”

Wild­fire pro­tec­tion in Ohio started in the early 1920s. The Forestry Fire War­dens had the task of orga­niz­ing fire crews and for keep­ing tools at the ready. They were also respon­si­ble for enforc­ing burn­ing reg­u­la­tions. Today sup­pres­sion falls mostly on local fire departments.

“We see our share of field fires,” said Clyde, Ohio Fire Chief Craig Davis of San­dusky County. The Clyde depart­ment cov­ers a city of about 6,000 and a total of 71 square miles of farm­land, high­ways, a sec­tion of the Ohio Turn­pike and river­front prop­erty bor­der­ing at the mouth of San­dusky Bay.

“The biggest thing I can say is to just be aware of not only your sur­round­ings but also the weather,” Davis commented.

“It might not be windy when you start your burn, but things can change very quickly. It is also required that any­one who wants to open burn must con­tact the Ohio EPA (Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency) and also their local fire department.”

Lowe also pointed out, “Farm­ers can be a great asset to our depart­ment as well as a big help to themselves.

“Farm­ers can keep access to their ponds eas­ily acces­si­ble and also may even wish to have a dry hydrant placed on their property.”

A dry fire hydrant is a hydrant that is not pres­sured. The hydrant is usu­ally made of PVC pipe that is bore under­ground and resur­faced into a water source. Water is then obtained from the hydrant by suc­tion­ing the water out of the source.

“Farm­ers or any­one who has a pond can greatly assist their local depart­ments by allow­ing dry hydrants on their prop­erty,” added Lowe.

A tar­get dis­tance of one dry hydrant every 3 square miles is desired. This pro­duces a travel time of about six min­utes between the water source and the fire, assum­ing an aver­age safe con­stant speed for a loaded truck of 35 miles per hour, accord­ing to a report in Fire House Magazine.

Gen­er­ally, the cost of instal­la­tion of a dry hydrant is between $500 and $750, but depart­ments which deter­mine the need for a hydrant at a spe­cific loca­tion may install it at no cost to a land owner. Most rural depart­ments have at least one dry hydrant within their dis­trict and most have several.

Dry hydrants not only pro­vide a water source for rural fire depart­ments — but are con­sid­ered an alter­na­tive water sup­ply under the Fire Sup­pres­sion Rat­ing Sched­ule. That sched­ule is used in estab­lish­ing ISO rat­ings for com­mu­ni­ties, which directly affect prop­erty insur­ance rates. The dry hydrant must meet ISO spec­i­fi­ca­tions, however.

Bloom Town­ship Trustee and retired Fire Chief Joe Shook also farms and has seen first-hand the con­nec­tion between farm­ing and field fires.

Shook, who was Bloom Town­ship Vol­un­teer Fire Chief on the bor­der of Seneca and Craw­ford coun­ties from 1975–85, keeps fire extin­guish­ers on all his farm­ing equipment.

“I have two to three extin­guish­ers on all my com­bines and trucks,” he said. “I have seen farm­ers start their own fields on fire with com­bines due to faulty wheel bear­ings and things like that. My advice to farm­ers is to make sure their equip­ment is always in good work­ing order.”

Tech­nol­ogy has also changed the way field fires are now han­dled with new ideas and improve­ments com­ing up each year.

“We have two field-fire trucks that are equipped with spray noz­zles on the front of them to bet­ter fight these types of fires and to bet­ter pro­tect our fire­men,” accord­ing to Lowe.

Field or grass fires typ­i­cally have been fought by fire per­son­nel get­ting up close and per­sonal with these fires.

They would use water mainly but also “swat­ter” or “pad­dles” to help mat down the flames. They would some­times dig up unburned land, soil or crops in front of the burn­ing fire to take away its fuel source.

“We have asked farm­ers to disk up part of a field in front of a mov­ing fire to stop its growth by tak­ing away its fuel,” Lowe pointed out about his dis­trict. “We obvi­ously make sure they are far enough in front of the fire to be safe but we have used this tech­nique before with very good suc­cess,” he added.

In the Clyde Fire Depart­ment ser­vice area, they are exper­i­ment­ing with leaf blow­ers on smaller fires and try­ing to blow the fire back to the burnt por­tion of the field also tak­ing its fuel source away.

“We heard about this tech­nique and have pur­chased a few blow­ers and have trained with them but have yet to use it on a live fire,” said Davis.

Shook also advised, “With this sum­mer being so dry, I can’t stress enough on just using com­mon sense.

“It only takes a sec­ond to start these fires, and some­one could lose a lot of crops and money not to men­tion a life,” he added.

Posted by Acres Admin on Jul 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.