Humans cause 18 fires in county

Alexis Barker
NLJ News Editor
 
On Aug. 3, firefighters responded to a fire near the Wyoming-South Dakota state line. The cause of the fire, according to Weston County fire warden Daniel Tysdal, was an illegal abandoned campfire on federal land, the 18th human-caused fire in the county.  The Weston County Fire Protection District and other local fire resources responded to the fire.
“These types of careless acts could cause catastrophic damage and be extremely expensive to suppress. The public needs to be particularly careful with any outdoor activity that could cause a fire and remember to be aware of and abide by all fire restrictions in place and realize these restrictions could vary between land management agencies,” Tysdal said. 
According to Tysdal, by Aug. 3, Weston County has seen nearly the 10-year average for the number of both natural and human-caused wildland fire calls. 
“The month of August we could expect to generally see more fires simply due to the late season drying and hot temperatures. So, August could be another long month and will likely put us well over an average year,” Tysdal said. “On a positive note though, the number of acres burned are relatively low for both natural-caused and human –caused, given the number of fires we’ve responded to — 167 acres for natural caused and 43.35 for human caused.” 
Less than a month ago, Tysdal had reported that seven natural-caused fires burned 46.55 acres, while 15 human-caused wildland fires burned 15.93 acres. 
“As we progress through summer, I would expect these numbers to continue to increase unless our current hot, dry and windy weather pattern changes,” Tysdal said. 
In the past 10 years, Weston County has had a total of 477 fires, of those, 249 were natural-caused fires and 228 were human-caused fires. These fires resulted in the destruction of 95,706.3 acres.