Chickasaw County issues burn ban, warns of dry weather

CHICKASAW COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – With the extremely dry weather, we are having another county has issued a burn ban.

Chickasaw County was added to the list over the weekend.

With other counties across Mississippi in a burn ban, Chickasaw County officials felt they needed to be added. Chickasaw County Fire Coordinator Johnathan Blankenship is advising residents to not burn because fires can quickly escalate.

“We’ve had fires before where one fire department can handle it, but we’ve also had fires before where we had just about every fire department in the county there and still required assistance from forestry and other neighboring counties, but it just depends. Like I said, a small fire could grow into a large fire really fast and that’s really what we’re trying to prevent by having a burn ban,” said Blankenship.

The number of people volunteering to fight fires is already low, making it harder to stop fires. Sheriff Meyers asks that the community be patient during this time.

“The main thing the public can do is to be patient. I know a lot of folks it gets this time of year, it starts getting cooler at night, and people want to have a fire. If they’ll just hold off a little bit until we get some rain, it’ll help us out a whole lot,” said Meyers.

And if you try to burn you could be issued a citation.

“It’s against state law during the burn ban. Like I say, if they are issued a citation, we go to justice court, and then it will be up to the judge as to what type of penalty it’ll be. Probably a fine but if a fire does get out and burns someone else’s property, then they’re looking at some civil problems as well,” said Meyers.

County officials say it can take only a few seconds for fires to get overwhelming.

Officials say the ban is in effect until the end of the month.

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