🎥 Wildfire Awareness Week is key for prevention

Information from Kansas Forest Service and Kansas State Fire Marshal

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — February 12 to 16 is Wildfire Awareness Week in Kansas.

If you want to check on your home specifically, you can do that through the Kansas Forest Service's Wildfire Risk Assessment Portal.

"It will zoom you right into the area that you might be interested in," said Dennis Carlson with the Kansas Forest Service. "A lot of times, people will look at this and see the street addresses, but they are so much more used to seeing aerial photos. That's easily accessed. You can change it to streets and aerial photos. Aerial photos is so much easier for people to look at, because they know what their property looks like and they can zoom into that."

The Kansas Forest Service has a tutorial video featuring Carlson. That is available below.

The Office of the State Fire Marshal and Kansas Interagency Wildfire Council offer the following tips and best practices for helping farmers and ranchers to have safe and successful prescribed burns of their fields and pastures, ensuring a burn doesn’t become a wildfire:

1. Know all state and local fire restrictions. Check with county officials who are charged with deciding whether burning is permissible based on local conditions.
2. Notify neighbors as a courtesy prior to burning.
3. Postpone the burn if unsure of the fuel and weather conditions.
4. Check the weather forecast, not just for the day you will be burning, but for a couple days afterward as well to avoid “holdover” escapes from burns that were completed and forgotten about a day or more prior.
5. Have adequate resources and equipment available to prevent escaped fires.
6. Consider smoke management to avoid unsafe roads and air quality conditions.
7. Do not burn to the ends of the field. Setting boundaries, “back burning” and keeping the fire off of fence rows will prevent out-of-control burns.

Below is a video from the Kansas State Fire Marshal's Office on safely burning a brush pile.

CLICK HERE to download the Hutch Post mobile app.
CLICK HERE to sign up for the daily Hutch Post email news update.