HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Fire Captain Troy Mueller said locally, we've been lucky this wildfire season, but public awareness has also helped reduce risk on the worst days.
"People are paying more attention," Mueller said. "I think some of the education, since the fires last year, people are more careful about what they do and they pay more attention to when they are burning and what they are burning and making sure, if they had a fire, they got it completely out afterwards."
There was supposed to be some wildfire training in past weeks, but conditions on those days were too severe to even train. Mueller will be doing some training this week.
"We're going to be doing some wildland and urban interface training the first week in May," Mueller said. "We're going to be going out in the Fire District 2 area and looking at doing structure protection on some of the houses that are in that area and doing real life training of deploying hoses at some of the houses that people have been kind enough to let us practice laying out hoses around their houses and looking at houses and how we can triage and protect their homes in that urban interface area."
It's also a good source of training when Hutch Fire can send crews later in the year when the risk is less here out west to help and have it paid for with federal dollars.
"Our engine here, Brush 71 that we send out, it will probably be available to go assist with fires out west sometime around the first part of June. We have members that are looking forward to going out and getting that experience and helping out in other states where it's needed. Hopefully, it's not a super busy season. I know that the guys that do get to go out, it's a good experience. It's training and not only is it helping out fire, but they are able to come back here and utilize that training. It makes us just a better department to be able to handle these wildfires."
Green up is starting to happen, so if we could get a little more rain and less windy conditions in the next few weeks, it could mitigate the risk considerably.
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