“Particularly Northern Ohio, parts of Indiana have been experiencing a lot of high temperatures, low humidities. A lot of the smaller fuels that carry wildfire have dried out—that’s grasses, leaves, even some of the crops. So we’re trying to be cautious.

So exactly, what are you telling people?

Just asking folks to take extra measures, make sure they’re not burning debris or opening burning as they can avoid it right now; hopefully consult with their local volunteer fire department about conditions—those are the folks that are probably most aware of what’s going on in the area—and just being careful.

What about folks who are camping out, for example, in the state park—they want to have a campfire in a fire ring—is that ok these days?

Well that’s going to be up to the individual state parks right now, and sometimes they do issue warnings about that. But certainly, folks, when they have a campfire, keep it small, always tend to it when it’s burning and make sure it’s dead cold out before they leave—that would be a big, big help.

We may have some people, especially here in Ohio, saying look, I hear all the time about these massive wildfires raging in Arizona and California and New Mexico, but we don’t have that kind of thing here—so what’s to worry about?

Well actually, we do have wildfires in Ohio. Some 800 or so are reported to the Division of Forestry every year, primarily in the southern and eastern part of the state. Northwest Ohio certainly has some as well. But we have different types of climate, and different fuels that burn here, so we won’t get the raging forest fires that are burning in the canopies and blowing up mountainsides that we’re seeing out west. But Ohio does have wildfire, usually in the spring and the fall months. But occasionally in the summertime, if things dry out enough, we will have wildfires. And they’re generally smaller fires and caused by people burning debris.”