By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Fire Chief Steven Beer explained how his department determined where to do their mitigation burning earlier this year to protect certain areas from wildfires.
"Everybody remembers the big fires of 2017 around Hutch," Beer said. "Along with that, there has been numerous other large fires around Hutch. What we did after the 2017 fire, we looked at some of the lessons that were learned. My division chief of operations and myself sat down with our GIS department and we looked at 20 years of history of big fires, wildland fires around Hutch. What we found when we started plotting these out, is that there was a lot of commonalities amongst these fires. They jumped the roads in the same spot, based on the wind speeds and different things, the wind directions and so, we came up with a plan to try to mitigate areas in key areas, based on history."
Beer gave one example.
"Use Plum Street as an example north of town," Beer said. "The road is basically 30 feet, but when we burn each side of the ditches off, we gain about 80 feet of anchoring points to burn off of or work off of. You take today, the relative humidity is going to be down to 15%. A lot of people don't really understand that. They just think fire is fire and it happens any time. When the humidity drops that low, basically you can spit on the ground and it can start a fire. It doesn't take anything and these fires jump these roads so fast and then they move on to the next road and they keep going. If we have places where we can stop and control these and anchor off of, we've got a fighting chance in these 40 to 50 mile an hour wind conditions."
A Red Flag Warning is in effect from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday.