Local fire departments urge residents to use caution with fireworks

By Anna Noel

Yorktown News-View

In the midst of one of the worst droughts DeWitt County has seen in many years, and with the Fourth of July approaching, Yorktown VFD Chief Chis Ochoa offered some tips and advice on how to avoid fires.

“Try to be smart when burning,” he advised. “Try not to do any burning during a burn ban, and if they are going to do some kind of burning, that they need to call the Sherrif’s Office and let them know that they are going to be burning. That’s one of the biggest things, is us getting called to a big brush fire and it’s somebody that’s doing a controlled burn or a prescribed burn, and they didn’t call the Sherrif’s Office. Anybody with a cell phone can report that, so we’re spending our resources. If the Sherrif’s Office is aware of a controlled burn, then they can log it down and when someone calls in a fire, they have it logged in that there’s a controlled burn there and they won’t call us out. They may call a deputy out to check it out, but they won’t have us go out there and spend our resources on something that’s controlled.

“Keep the grass short around structures, around the fencelines, things like that where the fire can’t spread quickly. We all know that we have three things that we need to have a fire, we need oxygen, fuel and an ignition source. A lot of times, the fuel is tall, dead grass. With the wind and a little spark, it could be disastrous.”

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