As burn bans persist in Faulkner County, officials emphasize the dangers of grass fires, burning brush and trash, and the spreadability of fire as temperatures remain warm and humidity remains low. 

“People just need to pay attention. When we’ve gone without rain and it gets really dry and the humidity drops — even with low humidity, a cigarette butt can start a grass fire,” Conway Fire Department Chief Mike Winter said.

A burn ban “restricts any type of open burning within the city of Conway,” Winter said. “Burning brush piles. In extreme cases, backyard fire pits. Can’t burn leaf piles or trash, you can’t burn anything outdoors.”

Winter said burning trash or brush can be dangerous if there are winds.

“Typically, they don’t burn them close to a structure, and the spread time, a lot of it depends on the humidity,” he said.

“When it’s low humidity, there’s less moisture in the air and it spreads much faster. So if it’s windy it’ll get out of control much quicker. 

“If embers come up from a fire, the wind can carry it off somewhere, and with lower humidity, it can start a fire away from the original fire and get away from an individual quick,” he said.

During the most recent burn ban, a house at 4262 Boone Loop Rd. was engulfed in flames after an “outside/open fire for debris or waste disposal” fire spread, according to the report.

Winter said, “They decided to burn some brush and it got out of control. They called us once their house caught on fire.”

Violating burn bans may result in citations, but Winter said the department usually only issues these to repeat offenders.

“Usually, first time, they just get a warning,” he said. The Boone Loop fire “where the individual lost their house, no, we didn’t issue anything on that one.”

Winter said late summer is a typical time for burn bans in Conway, “but not always. It’s just when we get into drought conditions and don’t have rainfall for quite a while.”

According to drought.gov, the city of Conway as of Oct. 2 was in D2 — severe drought. 

Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the Arkansas National Weather Service Dennis Cavanaugh said specific weather conditions can contribute to the dry conditions necessary for a burn ban.

“Weather conditions that could support grass fires are going to be prolonged periods without rain. Especially when it’s abnormally warm, when the humidity is abnormally low,” he said.

“Winds play a factor in whether a grass fire will spread or not, but winds aren’t all that predictable on long timescales. So they’re not as big of a factor in most instances for declaring a burn ban or not,” Cavanaugh said.

“The conditions that allow the fire to spread quickly, they’re all generally the same. If you’re burning something, and it’s windy, but the grass and the bushes …  if they’re all very green, that fire might spread a little bit, but it’s probably going to put itself out — even on even on a windy day,” he said.

“So you really need those conditions where the soil is drier than normal, the vegetation is stressed. It may still look green, but it would be brittle.

“The grass or the needles or the leaves will be fairly brittle. And with lower-than-average relative humidity … any water present anywhere is going to slow the spread of a fire because in order for the fire to spread, it’s got to evaporate the water out of whatever it’s attempting to burn. So the less water that’s in something, the faster it will burn,” Cavanaugh said. 

Burn bans can be issued county or city-wide. The burn ban as of Oct. 2 was issued by county Judge Allen Dodson on Sept. 18. 

For the most up-to-date information on burn bans, check https://conwayarkansas.gov/fire/ for city-wide bans and https://www.arkfireinfo.org/ for county-wide burns.

Editor’s note: The Echo is produced on Monday, printed on Tuesday and distributed on Wednesday. As of Monday, Oct. 2, Faulkner County is still under a burn ban. A chance of rain is possible on Wednesday and Thursday, which may affect the status of the ban.