Officials with the Texas A&M Forest Service say conditions have rapidly deteriorated over the past month, making any wildfires that ignite extremely dangerous.
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00:00 Texas is under high alert for wildfires
00:02 following six weeks of some extremely
00:04 high temperatures and little or for some.
00:06 No rain.
00:07 Aaron O'Connor is lead public
00:09 information officer with Texas A&M
00:10 Forest Service, the state agency in
00:12 charge of fighting wildfires and Aaron.
00:14 Thank you so much for joining us.
00:17 Thanks for having me today.
00:19 Well, Aaron, what is the wildfire
00:21 situation across the Lone Star State
00:23 now and how many active fires are there?
00:25 And so we are currently responding
00:29 to 10 active wildfires.
00:30 In general, we have had just increased
00:33 activity over the past couple weeks
00:35 due to those temperatures you mentioned.
00:37 So those triple digit temperatures,
00:39 the dry conditions,
00:40 and now we're having a little
00:42 bit of wind across the landscape,
00:45 and that's just the perfect
00:47 environment for a wildfire.
00:48 And what types of wildfires
00:50 have you been seeing?
00:51 What are the causes and how have
00:54 firefighters been battling them?
00:57 Yes, so in Texas the majority of our
01:00 wildfires are caused by humans.
01:01 Unfortunately, in the summer months
01:03 we see a lot of roadside starts.
01:05 So blown tires,
01:06 chains dragging on roadways,
01:07 parking in dry grass.
01:09 We also see a fair amount of debris burning.
01:11 We do have a couple of lightning
01:13 fires mixed in there,
01:15 but it's mostly those roadside starts.
01:17 And typically our summer fires
01:19 are maybe a little bit smaller.
01:21 They're not moving as quickly,
01:22 but they're very impactful.
01:24 We've seen a lot recently that
01:26 are near communities and where
01:27 people live and with the temperatures
01:30 and the conditions we're seeing,
01:32 these fires are holding heat a lot
01:34 longer and they're also exhibiting
01:36 extreme fire behavior.
01:37 So there have they have more
01:39 potential to impact populations,
01:41 and I imagine that they are more
01:43 challenging to fight as well with
01:45 just the human toll of the heat
01:48 on our bodies for the fire crews.
01:50 So how have the weather conditions
01:52 contributed to this over the past?
01:55 Three or four months.
01:56 So we had a very slow year until
02:00 about mid June when pretty much
02:03 all of our rainfall stopped.
02:05 So we we had some fires in the spring
02:08 winter but nothing really of note.
02:10 It's a well below normal fire season,
02:13 and then once we stopped getting
02:15 that rainfall mid June and then
02:17 those high temperatures hit the state,
02:20 then we just saw that area of dry
02:23 vegetation just really start to expand.
02:25 We had developing drought and
02:27 pretty intense drought and our.
02:28 We've just seen our conditions
02:30 deteriorate pretty rapidly the
02:32 past month or so, so this is
02:34 certainly certainly a notable
02:35 time in our summer fire season,
02:37 and certainly some challenges,
02:39 at least in the current part of
02:41 the year here with some of that heat.
02:43 Well, thank you so much for your time.
02:45 Aaron O'Connor,
02:46 lead public information officer with
02:47 the Texas A&M Fire Service and Forest
02:49 Service I should say you guys cover
02:51 a lot of area big chunk of real
02:53 estate out there, so it's a big
02:54 responsibility. Thank you, Aaron.
02:56 Thank you.