With all but six Arkansas counties under a burn ban as of Thursday and elevated risk of wildfires across the state, experts with the Cooperative Extension Service are urging residents to take precautions to protect their land, property and lives.
“The weather pattern we’re in — a high-pressure system with swirling winds — is a boiling pot for wildfires,” said Jaret Rushing, extension forestry instructor for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture. “The stress that the trees have been under for the past 12 months with the drought has really started to show. There’s been a lot of early leaf-fall this year as well, so there’s a lot of litter on the ground that could act as a fire fuel.”
County judges are responsible for issuing burn bans for their respective counties. According to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, 50 of the state’s 75 counties were in moderate wildfire danger as of Wednesday. The remaining 25, clustered in central and south Arkansas, were in high wildfire danger, defined by the department as a situation in which fires “ignite easily and spread quickly.”