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By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

An isolated weather event across Alabama to begin the month of March has caused dozens of wildfires across the state, including a handful in Chilton County that have burned several acres. Reports from the Alabama Forestry Commission (AFC) on the morning of March 4 reported that more than 6,000 acres have burned in Alabama wildfires over the past week with more than 175 wildfires reported in the state. It is the most wildfires reported in the state since Jan. 1, 2020 when wildfire data from the AFC was first made available.

In Chilton County alone, 12 wildfires were reported and marked on the AFC Wildfire Map on their website. As of March 4, all of the fires were contained or controlled until an additional wildfire was reported near County Road 418 in Clanton. Between the 12 fires, around 140 acres of land were burned. Modestly, three fires happened in northern Chilton County near the Chilton-Shelby County line that burned less than three acres, and two fires in the Clanton city limits that burned around three acres combined. However, larger fires raged on in eastern Chilton County with a wildfire near the Chilton-Coosa County line that burned 20 acres of land. The largest wildfire in the county burned in Verbena and Marbury near the Chilton-Autauga County line where nearly 100 acres burned. Volunteer and full-time fire departments battled the wildfires in the county and controlled all of them.

After only 20 calls for wildfires to the AFC from Feb. 1-20, the agency responded to 140 fires in the last week of February alone. The AFC issued a Wildfire Advisory and did not issue burn permits from Feb. 27 to March 4 to help combat the dry and gusty wind conditions. The burn restriction was not like traditional restrictions where drought conditions over a period of time leads to a burn ban. This burn ban was put into place due to a combination of dry conditions, gusty winds and low relative humidity.

“With a significant uptick in wildfire ignitions over the last week, the agency points to dropping relative humidity in the afternoon as especially concerning,” the Alabama Forestry Commission said in a press release. “The combination of these conditions creates a greater-than-average potential for outdoor fires to escape easily and spread rapidly, taking longer — and more the agency’s firefighting resources — to contain and ultimately control.”

The AFC said that anyone who burns a field, grassland or woodland without a burn permit while burn restrictions are in place are subject to prosecution for committing a Class B misdemeanor. The storm system in the evening of March 4 is expected to help the wildfire situation in the state significantly.