A string of grass fires and an increasing hazard prompted two more Central Alberta counties to issue fire bans on Tuesday.
Dry conditions — prime for igniting and spreading fires — is the reason Mountain View and Ponoka counties opted to issue the bans.
“This requires all outdoor fires presently burning to be extinguished and the lighting of any outdoor fires is prohibited,” stated a fire ban notice issued by Mountain View County chief administrative officer Tony Martens.
The fire bans prohibit fire permit holders and the use of fireworks and burning barrels. The only expectation is the use of internal household fireplaces and fires that are contained in cooking and heating appliances.
“It is extremely dry, so hopefully we will get some rain this weekend,” said Ponoka County assistant chief administrative officer Tom Webber.
“The fire department has better things to do rather than chase grass fires around the county,” he said.
The two new fire bans come two weeks after the County of Stettler issued its fire ban, which also suspends all outstanding fire permits and requires all outdoor fires to be put out immediately.
Clearwater County has yet to issue a fire ban despite Clearwater Regional Fire Rescue Services responding to eight to 10 grass fires last weekend.
Rural residents especially need to exercise precaution due to exposure to winds and expanse of dry grass, deputy fire chief Patrick Oslund said.
“We do not have a fire ban but we strongly are encouraging people to not do any burning right now,” he said.
Clearwater County issues fire bans in conjunction with Sustainable Resource Development because two-thirds of the county is in the forest protection area. This can pose a problem, the fire chief said.
“If we put a fire ban on we can only put it on in the white zone. So that quite literally means that one person on one side of the road can’t burn and another person on the other side can burn with an SRD permit.”
Lacombe County doesn’t plan on issuing a fire ban but will monitor the conditions, manager of Environment and Protective Services Keith Boras said.
“I don’t think we have been as dry as some of the other places.
“This time of year we have a lot of agriculture producers who are trying to get on the land and get it worked so if we put a fire ban on now it might make things fairly difficult,” he said.
Red Deer County also has not issued a fire ban.
More fire ban information is available online at albertafirebans.ca. To report a fire, call 310-FIRE toll-free.
jjones@www.reddeeradvocate.com