Volunteer firefighters from Kentucky Township Fire Department of Jefferson County watch a controlled burn at East 900 and 1800 Road on Friday.

With the first significant rainfall in more than a month, Mike Baxter showed up for work last Wednesday anticipating a rare quiet day.

“There are never any guarantees, but today is a good day to burn,” the Wakarusa Township Fire Department fire chief said. “The ground is moist, so things won’t get carried away.”

Traditionally, this is the start of a busy time for Douglas County’s nine township fire departments as dead vegetation, low humidity and near-constant Kansas winds make wildfires an almost daily concern. Baxter said the threat has grown worse in recent years.

“One of the things we’ve seen over the past few years is it’s been drier,” he said. “This winter, we had no real snow cover. In the first eight days of March, we’ve had 10 grass fires. We’re having more countywide. We’re on pace to outdo 2014, which was a record year for grass fires in northeast Kansas.”

The Kansas Fire Marshal’s office reports there were 8,483 wildfires in the state in 2014 and 190 in Douglas County. The number fell statewide to about 6,000 in 2015.

The northeast Kansas grass fire season usually starts in mid-March and runs through mid-April, said Eric Ward, fire planning specialist for the Kansas Forest Service.

“It started early this year and hit with a vengeance,” he said. “We started getting reports of large fires of more than 300 acres in mid-February.”

Although grass fires that large have not yet been reported in Douglas County, there have been big wildfires nearby, Baxter said. On Feb. 27, a fire just across the Leavenworth County line raged through 500 acres before it was brought under control. And on March 6 a fire in western Shawnee County spread through 4,000 acres, he said.

There is one other factor in the number of seasonal wildfires, Baxter and other township fire chiefs agree. Too often, rural property owners start fires on days they shouldn’t.

“I know last weekend alone, we ran eight grass fires,” said Eudora Township Fire Chief Duke Verhelst. “All those were accidentally set. Somebody decided it was a good day to burn trash or brush or carelessly threw a cigarette from a car.”

Randy DeMersseman, chief of the Palmyra Township Fire Department, said of the 38 fires his department responded to last March, 36 were grass fires. Nearly all were fires property owners set that got out of control.

Burning of the previous year’s growth or crops is a long-standing agricultural practice and indispensable in preserving the local tall-grass prairie, Ward said. Controlled burning helps keep cedars and invasive plants from spreading through pastures and gives spring growth a better chance to thrive, he said.

Will Shockley conducts a controlled burn Friday, March 11, 2016, near East 900 and North 1800 Road, northwest of Lawrence.

Those benefits come with risks, even for those experienced in controlled agricultural burns.

Problems arise in counties with large rural commuter populations in which residents attempt controlled burns but lack the experience or equipment to control them, Ward said.

On the other hand, Douglas County does benefit from having well-funded rural fire departments outfitted with equipment developed to fight wildfires, Ward said.

The Wakarusa department has three four-wheel drive pickups called brush rigs, which can get off rural roads and close to fires. The Eudora and Palmyra township departments each have two of the trucks equipped with small water tanks, hoses and firefighting tools. The Wakarusa department also has an ATV equipped with a water tank that allows access to even more remote terrain, Baxter said.

Traditional trucks are also deployed. Baxter said tankers were deployed to keep the brush rigs filled with water, and pumper trucks are stationed near residences and important outbuildings to keep them out of danger, Baxter said.

Although the threat is real, structure fires are rare during out-of-control burns. Verhelst said he knew of only one outbuilding lost this year, and it was a dilapidated shed of small value.

Another big asset for the departments in fighting is their web of mutual aid agreements, which ensures adequate resources will be available.

“Mutual aid is a very key part for all volunteer fire departments,” Verhelst said. “We’re all volunteer departments, and people have lives and families. You don’t know who will be available.”

It can involve a lot of moving pieces, especially when fires start popping up all over the map, Verhelst said. On March 6 for the large Leavenworth County fire, his department sent out a brush rig to help there and another to cover at a Wakarusa station, which had trucks helping with other fires.

As equipment has changed, so have tactics used to control wildfires. DeMersseman said his department is now taking a more defensive approach through use of backfires and other techniques that save wear and tear on equipment, he said. For example, he said firefighters used to place an emphasis on preventing fires from reaching tree lines, because of the danger that a brush fire could become a timber fire.

“We’ve found fires burn slower in timber because the trees knock the wind down,” he said. “We’ve introduced new techniques to where we’re now looking to take advantage of timber.”

The technique makes use of backpacks filled with water and foam, which quickly suppress fires in tree lines, DeMersseman said.

Despite all the equipment at the rural departments’ disposal, controlling wildfires still requires a lot of hard work with shovels, rakes and chainsaws, the chiefs said. That manual response in close contact to flames puts firefighters in danger of dehydration, heat exhaustion, falls in rough terrain and, of course, burns.

“There’s countless cases of firefighters getting caught in fires with sudden wind shifts,” DeMersseman said. “It can be just as tragic as structure fires. Things happen quickly, like with all fires.”

There isn’t enough awareness of the potential danger among rural property owners or enough compliance with the county’s open burn policies, the chiefs said. The county’s rural burn policy allows open burning provided property owners notify the county dispatch center and the local fire department of their intentions and monitor the fire. Burning is prohibited on days when wind speeds are greater than 15 mph or when the National Weather Service’s daily rangeland fire index for northeast Kansas is listed as either very high or extreme.

Residents wanting to schedule a controlled burn should call the Douglas County Emergency Communications Center at 843-0250. Dispatchers can provide numbers of local rural fire departments and information on whether conditions are right for burning.

Too often, both those requirements are ignored, especially on weekends when the majority of wildfires occur.

“People are home on the weekends,” Baxter said. “They have time to conduct their burns that can get out of control.”

There can be penalties for ignoring the county policy, but neither Baxter nor Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson could recall any case in which a property owner was cited. Fire department personnel would have to make such misdemeanor citations, Branson said.

The more likely outcome is a lecture to the embarrassed property owner who started a burn on a day that trained and well-equipped fire departments struggle to control fires.

“People need to understand it is very easy to get over your head,” DeMersseman said. “People say it’s just grass fires, but seldom do they move slowly. They are fast-moving fires that can consume everything in their path — structures, livestock or vehicles.”