BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Officials are urging people in Louisiana to be cautious when lighting fires over the next few weeks.

“Currently we’re under a red flag warning, which means conditions are conducive for a fire to get out of control,” said Commissioner Mike Strain, with the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

Right now, Louisiana is seeing dry conditions, low humidity, and high wind speeds, which can cause a fire to easily become out of control.

”You need to wait until it’s been raining, and it’s been wet to burn those brush piles, today with the wind speeds as they are and the conditions on the land surrounding the brush pile, we’re advising please do not burn your brush piles,” added Strain.

Louisiana’s state climatologist, Jay Grymes, says the red flag warning won’t last long, but over the next few weeks, it is still a good idea to be cautious.

”A quarter of the state has already implemented some restrictions in terms of activities because conditions are so dry and I wouldn’t be surprised if, between this afternoon and this weekend, we see another five or 10 parishes added to that burn ban list,” said Grymes.

Grymes says the dry conditions are not expected to be quite as bad as last year when we saw wildfires take off across the state, but state officials are still preparing for anything.

”Those fires last year got so big that they didn’t even have the ground machinery to handle the fires, so LDAF is in the process of changing that in some locations and in terms of the equipment and the arsenal they’ll have, should we have a repeat of last year, not expecting things to get that bad this fall,” added Grymes.

The Central Fire Department is one of the stations ready with equipment.

”Several parishes have the ATVs that we deploy and put out the grass fires, we also have some flappers that we use to walk around the edge of the fire that’s in the field to extinguish it,” said Derek Glover, Asst. Chief for the Central Fire Department.

He said it’s not uncommon in these conditions, especially in rural areas, to see grass fires yearly, and they are ready if the time comes.

“As the grass burns in an open environment, the wind pushes it and it spreads quickly, so we try to stay on the burned side of the fire with the assets. That way there’s no danger of those being in the line of fire,” added Glover.

These experts ask that you do not burn anything, even if you aren’t in a parish with a burn ban, as one member can go a long way in these conditions.

For updates on parishes with burn bans click here.

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