The Kendall County drought index soared over the 500 mark this week, signaling a return to a countywide burn ban.
“The burn ban is back,” Kendall County Fire Marshall Jeffery Fincke said after Kendall County Commissioners July 10 voted to reinstate the county’s burn ban.
Fincke told commission members half of the county already exceeded the 500 mark on the Keetch-Byram Drought Index, used by the U.S. Forest Service to assess the risk of fire.
This drought index gauges the amount of precipitation necessary to return the soil to full field capacity. The index ranges from zero, the point of no moisture deficiency, to 800, the maximum drought that is possible.
“We monitor that every day,” Fincke said. “When you get in the 300s and 400s, you can start seeing more grass fires. When you get to the 400-to-500s, you see more. At 500 and 600, we get to the point where we want to declare a burn ban.” Fincke told the commissioners five of the seven county fire station chiefs asked him to petition the commission for the burn ban.
“And with the heat predictions, I can guarantee you it’ll be at 500 or more across the entire county by week’s end. That’s when we start worrying about it,” he told commission.
But it didn’t take that long.
“We’ve gone, in just a few days, from the 400500s up into the 500-600s everywhere,” he said. “In Bexar, Comal, Kendall, and in parts of Kerr and Gillespie, I know we were at 500 countywide by the middle of the week.”
With 10-day and longrange forecasts showing little to no chance of precipitation, Fincke said the county’s fire stations and crews are on alert for grassfires.
“Roadside fires? We’ve had a few, but not like what we expect to happen in the next few weeks if we don’t get any moisture,” he said. “But yes, we are starting to see them happen.”
The fire marshal wants the public to know about the increased risk for grassfires and the potential for such blazes to spread rapidly.
“People don’t understand, but with this low humidity and these high temperatures, it dries the moisture out of even the greenest grasses and vegetation. And it burns so fast, you’d think it was a hayfield,” he said.
Most of the state and county roads leading into the county will have a burn ban sign posted.
“If you’re coming in from Kerr, Gillespie, or Comal, wherever you enter the county, you’ll see the ‘Burn Ban On’ signs up already,” he said.
He said the county uses the media to stress the importance of watching and tending to any burning that does go on.
“We use our mass notification system. We post it on the emergency management Facebook page, and nearly all of the fire stations reposted it,” he said. “We just want to let the public know what they need to do to be safe.”
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