Quiet fire season in Mason County

Matt Baide | Nov 10, 20220

Mason County Fire Marshal Randy Collins said the 2022 fire season was “quieter than most” regarding wildfires within the county.

Collins said he thinks most of that has to do with the late spring rains and not having any mega heat waves, like the temperatures reached in 2021.

From September 10 to 16, Mason County instituted a recreational burn ban when the National Fire Danger Rating System was elevated to very high fire danger, which caused red flag fire conditions.

“With the exception of that, the weather and the conditions weren’t terribly bad, and the fuel moistures remained relatively high, which I think had a lot to do with it,” Collins told the Journal.

Collins said the wildfires that were burning throughout the region, which brought smoke that blanketed Mason County and much of the state, were something he was paying attention to.

“I do keep tabs on those because one thing that is extremely important in this line of work is keeping track of stats, fire history and things like that because if you don’t do that, one, in my opinion, you’re not doing your job because you try to be as proactive as you can with fire prevention activities,” Collins said. “Historically, codes are reactive. When there’s a big fire or you get a bunch of fire deaths, or a huge fire loss, then all the experts will look at that more closely, determine the cause and say we should probably implement these fire codes to address that. If you’re proactive, you will see those things happening elsewhere, maybe not here, and say it might be a good idea to implement these here, especially if in a few years, we’re going to be subject to the same conditions, climatic, that they are in those areas.”

When he took the job as fire marshal, Collins had a list of things he wanted to get done. One was addressing the inconsistencies in the application of burn restrictions in the past.

“One of the things I did was I met with DNR (Department of Natural Resources) and I talked with them about the process they use for implementing burn restrictions and the national fire danger rating system,” Collins said. “I thought to myself, well, wouldn’t it make sense if when you implement any fire restrictions on your lands, that we do the same in Mason County so a consistent message is getting out to everybody? Because let’s face it, there are some streets you can drive down in this county and one side is DNR land and the other side is Mason County-regulated lands served by some fire district. It would be ridiculous to have burn restrictions on one side of the street when you didn’t across the street. So, they agreed that would be a good idea so I actually drafted a policy.”

He took that policy to the fire chiefs and asked for their feedback before presenting it as an action item for the Mason County commissioners, which they approved in August.

Collins said he had listening sessions with stakeholders in fire protection and listened to how they operate, the relationship with the fire marshal’s office, what weaknesses could be improved and what has worked well.

“The good news is for the most part, everybody’s had a pretty good working relationship,” Collins said. “We did find some things and areas for improvement and I made a list of goals over the next few years to work on to help correct that, but nothing outstanding or really big jumped out. The biggest thing by far is simply communication.”

Collins said he is working on applying for grant money to help fund a program for fire districts to be able to do their own fire inspections.

With fire season in the rearview mirror, Collins has some things he will be working on before next fire season. He also reminded people that fires can still happen in the winter, so be prepared with smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, have a fire extinguisher on-hand and learn how to use it, and clean their fireplaces.