One of the four fires Buckland Fire and Rescue has responded to this week. (Buckland Fire and Rescue/Facebook)

By Ian Gustafson

Dry Grass

Buckland Fire and Rescue respond to multiple grass fires

Apr 30, 2020 | 4:21 PM

As the spring season and warmer weather have now arrived, the risk of grass fires is now back.

“The grass is really dry now and, in the trees, even it’s a little higher but it’s still dry,” Buckland Fire and Rescue Fire Chief Garry Schrader said. “We’re waiting for it to green up and it probably won’t be greening up for another three weeks here.”

In the last week Buckland Fire and Rescue have responded to four separate grass and brush-related fires, including two yesterday.

On April 24, they responded to a small grass fire in the ditch along Highway 3 West of Prince Albert.

Four days later on April 28 at 8 p.m. they were called to a grass fire on Buckland Road south of Shell River. Two tankers were deployed, and 12 firefighters were there for an hour and a half.

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Yesterday Buckland Fire and Rescue responded to two separate calls. The first was a wildfire west of Spruce Home 11 a.m. Thirteen members of Buckland Fire and Rescue were there for two and a half hours.

Immediately after they were called to another wildfire one mile east of the first call. Fifteen firefighters were on scene and they were there for seven and a half hours. The Prince Albert Fire Department were on standby for Buckland and responded to another incident while Buckland Fire and Rescue was busy on the last call.

“The first one yesterday, it spread pretty fast. It got into a field and everything else, so we got it under control in about an hour and a half and then we just had to do some mop up after,” Schrader said “The one right after that, we turned around and headed east and all of a sudden his neighbour’s place was on fire, the field and everything else was on fire too.”

He said the second fire yesterday was bigger and got into a lot of pastureland and trees.

“We stopped it from going across the grid road and everything else, but we probably had that one under control in about three hours and we did a lot of mop up in there on hotspots,” Schrader said.

Being on a call for that long can be quite grueling, he said.

“It was pretty warm out yesterday too so yeah we gotta make sure our guys take some time to rehab and get some water in them,” Schrader said. “We had 15 guys out there, so we were fighting three different areas.”

The fire chief’s advice to the public is for those who want to burn their leaves, to make sure you have a lid or screen over top of your burning barrel. He also said if you are going to burn leaves to make sure you have some sort of water source beside you.

“You have to be careful because right now with a little bit of wind that’ll blow those leaves into your neighbour’s house and they’re already hot,” he explained.

He added the grass is drier because there hasn’t been much standing water.

“It’s either just evaporated so fast or the ground has thawed out and it’s soaked into the ground already and that still makes the grass and the vegetation on top of it so dry,” he said.

Schrader said since April 1, anyone who wants to do a controlled burn has to phone in a controlled burn number to get a permit. He said to contact the P.A. Fire Base at 306-953-3422.

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Ian.gustafson@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @iangustafson12