I hear ya Oldman. My county is in white on the map with no current burn ban. Our commissioners usually react slow on enacting bans. Not too much of a problem right now but the potential is there. Most brush/grass fires we have had are "controlled" burns that get out of control. A ban sometimes is the only education the public understands. Good luck in your area. TCSS
Very dry here, we are located in Stephens County.. www.waylandvfd.webs.com, on top of it all we have had some setting fires, 40 last weekend alone, its killing us.
The fuel loads in the state are statistically higher than normal due in part by damage from hurricane Ike in the southeast, coupled with the downturn of the economy and ranchers not having to rotate pastures as much due to diminished herd sizes, and the higher rainfall averages during last summer. The explosive growth in the Houston area have caused "city folk" to come to the country, and the expanding interface are beginning to become an issue here.
Of course this is nothing like what you guys are experiencing down there. I do think about you guys every day.
We need all the help we can get, they just had a call where we had fires over the weekend of someone putting shot gun shells in a jar filled with gasoline, reports were some heard gun shots and that what they found, pretty sad when someone wants to burn the entire country down, I do want to say Thanks to Eastland County for offering us some help and to the guys at Hamilton , Pottsville and Eden for offering to Help out.
The story of the 40 fires is in the Breckenridge American newspaper out of Breckenridge Texas.
High fuel loads are a killer. Many of our worst areas for fuel load are where the rabid environmentalists have too much power, they manage to halt fuel reduction burns. I wonder if they'll come out and say that the recent fatalities here were none of their doing? Bastards. We still have many areas that could go up. Hopefully they won't.