Spring brings increased danger of wildfires

By RAY WYCHE

With the appearance of swelling buds and early blossoms on plants, spring is announcing its arrival, and the North Carolina Forest Service is preparing to get busy.

Nature begins to change about the middle of March. Breezes become stronger, humidity drops, and growing plants and trees begin to put on new growth, drawing moisture from the ground. Spring is also the season when people get busy cleaning their yards and gardens of winter’s debris, raking dead grasses and weeds into piles and setting them afire, and in rare cases burning the residue of last year’s crops from farmlands.

Probably the number one danger involved in forest fires is low humidity, and at 1 p.m. Wednesday, humidity at Forest Service offices in Whiteville was 18 percent, with a low of 10 percent predicted by sundown Wednesday.

State headquarters of the Forest Service in Raleigh Wednesday afternoon issued a “red flag” warning indicating “extremely dry and windy conditions” that could produce threats of forest fires.

The annual spring forest fire season is now underway, with seven wildfires being reported in the county in the first two weeks of the month, not a bad record since most of these consumed only small acreages.

But the potential for fires of much larger proportions still exists, and the forestry people are getting ready.

State forestry officials claim the current fire season has an earlier than usual start but Ray Dew, operations officer for Forest District 8 which consists of six counties, says it’s the normal time for the outbreak of spring fires.

“It’s not early,” Dew says of the fire occurrences.

Statewide, the Forest Service reports that as of March 5, a total of 1,359 fires had been reported, compared to 920 fires for the same period of 2005. Much of this increase comes from fires in the western part of the state, where rainfall has been slight during the past few months.

Precipitation in the local area thus far this month totals 0.47 inches, with the average precipitation for March standing at 4.31 inches, said Ty Marshall, superintendent of the N. C. Crop Research Station northwest of Whiteville. The current month’s rainfall compares to 0.25 inches for the same period last year, 0.11 in 2004, 1.42 in 2003, and 2.97 in 2002. Marshall said precipitation for the past few months has been below the 54-year average at the station.

When the rains fall is as important in determining forest fire danger as how much falls, according to District 8 Forester Shane Hardee. Although rains during the past few years have been under the 50-year average, the timeliness of the precipitation has been important in prevention and control of wildfires.

One danger factor that forest fire fighters managed to avoid last spring is still present this year: tree debris from the January 2004 ice storm which broke limbs and tops of many young pine trees in the area. The downed wood has now dried out and provides more fuel for forest fires, officials say.

“Last year, we didn’t have a lot of activity,” Hardee said, “so the fuel load is still there.”

“The fuel is still there,” Dew says of the fallen tree parts that have been on the forest floor for more than two years. “It takes several years to rot away.”

District 8 has about 97 employees—the most of any district in the state—to fight fires in the counties of Columbus, Bladen, Brunswick, Pender, Duplin and New Hanover. The district also has the largest number of fires in its 1,963,000 acres of woodlands of any district.

Most of the woods fires in District 8 are due to carelessness on the part of some human.

“Probably 75 percent of the fires we have are caused by debris burning,” Hardee says. “We have twice the number of fires of any other district in the Coastal Plain,” he adds.

State Forestry officials are warning homeowners to be particularly careful in burning trash this time of the year, with low humidity and high winds and term the present weather conditions as “abnormally dry.”

Wildfire experts also advise homeowners to remove flammable materials such as dead grass and weeds and other vegetative matter from areas adjacent to their homes and outbuildings.

State officials say North Carolina has more homes located in wooded areas than any other state.