Tuesday marked the official start of the Douglas Forest Protective Association’s fire season. Backyard debris burning is now banned within the 1.6 million acres in Douglas County covered by the DFPA.
On Monday, crews responded to three escaped debris fires. Kyle Reed with the DFPA says while those fires were kept to under an acre, this year’s fire season could be exacerbated by what was left after February’s massive snowfall. He says “we’re seeing heavy, heavy pockets of fuels, everything from broken top trees to stuff that’s completely uprooted so that’s a big concern for us going forward in those areas that were not cleaned up after that storm.”
In addition to the ban on backyard burning, the use of explosive targets and tracer ammunition is also prohibited. Other public use restrictions that apply to campfires or mowing dry grass usually come around the first of July, but with the higher fuels and warm temperatures, those restrictions could come sooner than later.