On Monday, two separate uncontrolled burn piles in the Northstate brought an important reminder that wildfires remain a possibility, even this last in the year.
Fires ignited in both Montgomery Creek in Shasta County and just north of Corning, in Tehama County; CAL FIRE says the burn piles were not controlled properly.
Of course, there are guidelines for having a prescribed burn, including the size of the burn pile, the area in which you burn, and the requirement that you never leave the pile unsupervised.
The suspension on burn permits was lifted earlier this month, as CAL FIRE declared the fire season over in our area.
But that doesn’t mean the fire risk is gone, especially amid windy fall conditions.
"Obviously, any time you have an uncontrolled fire, the fire kinda does what it wants and some damage can be done before we can get there and put it out," said JT Zulliger, Battalion Chief for CAL Fire's Shasta-Trinity Unit. "For example, two weeks ago we had a control burn that was escaped in Round Mountain... that fire was not fully extinguished, they thought it was... and then that fire they thought was out came to life in the middle of the night, and the wind caught it and it ended up burning an acre or so."
Zulliger said another fire hazard they see this time of year is people discarding the ashes from their home fireplaces in an unsafe manner.
The battalion chief encourages people to head to the CAL FIRE website and read up on the rules for burning safely before they ignite their pile.
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