By Loyd Cook
Eric Meyers Jr., Navarro County’s emergency management coordinator, is urging residents here to take “extreme care” in preventing the outbreak of a fire.
He’s following the statewide concern that was demonstrated Wednesday when Texas Governor Rick Perry issued a disaster proclamation for wildfires, covering 152 of Texas’ 254 counties.
“I urge Texans to exercise extreme caution as conditions remain favorable for the development of wildfires across the state,” Perry said. “Vigilance and good judgment are key to ensuring Texans’ families, homes and places of work remain safe.”
It’s a concern that was echoed by Meyers on Thursday.
“This is the time when people have to pay attention and not burn ... that they don’t do anything that can spark a wildfire,” the county’s emergency management coordinator said. “They’re able to grow and spread so rapidly.”
Thursday’s high winds could have caused a grass fire in the Silver City area to run amok, but thanks to a quick response by three local volunteer fire departments, they kept it from spreading.
But they stopped it a mere feet from two homes separated by about 25 acres of burnt grass.
The Pursley, Dawson and Purdon departments responded. Kelly Boulware said the initial firefighting efforts involved 10 or so volunteer firefighters keeping the blaze under control with handheld equipment before fire trucks began to douse much of the area.
A much larger fire, about 200 acres, hit an area near SECR 0040 and SECR 0070, approximately two miles southeast of the PacTiv plant on East State Highway 31 on Tuesday. It required several volunteer departments and at least one unit from the Corsicana Fire Department. Assistance was also provided by the Texas Forest Service and a bulldozer from the Navarro County Precinct 2 barn.
The 20 to 50 mile per hour winds seen here in recent days, coupled with the “Red Flag” fire warnings that have periodically been issued by the National Weather Service for the North Texas area, has all emergency personnel in the county on alert.
Meyers said the governor’s disaster proclamation allows the state to free up resources to come to local aid, should the need arise. Resources like the Texas Air National Guard and its helicopters are available for fighting fires from the skies.
He said it also allows state officials to move resources to staging areas around the affected areas of the state in order to improve response times.
Meyers continued to note the abundance of dormant and dead vegetation left over from growths sparked by heavy rains last year.
“What it’s going to take (to help with the danger) is a lot of this growth needs to be cut out or, and I hope this doesn’t happen, burned out,” Meyers said. “Hopefully, we’ll get some good spring rains to give us a break before we get into the drier time of the year in the summer.”
Meyers said activities that might spark a fire, such as outside welding, should be avoided for now.
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Loyd Cook may be reached via e-mail at lcook@corsicanadailysun.com
