Hot, dry weather creates dangerous conditions across West Tennessee

HARDIN COUNTY, Tenn. — With the extremely hot and dry weather we’ve been experiencing, grass and wood fires have occurred across areas of West Tennessee.

For several days, Hardin County firefighters have been busy dealing with what the fire chief calls “careless burning” by residents.

According to the Tennessee Drought Monitor, Hardin County and several counties surrounding them are experiencing a severe to moderate drought in the area.

Hardin County Fire Chief Melvin Martin said that with these conditions he wants residents to remember not to do any outside burning.

“If you have a fire outside or accidentally or intentionally try to burn a brush pile or something, just remember that it is in severe drought and can easily burn especially with the low humidities,” said Martin.

Henderson County also experienced a few outdoor fires. One took place on Wednesday, August 28 when a hot burning tire from a semi-trailer traveling on interstate 40 caused a fire, burning the grass down to the soil.

“Yesterday afternoon, we responded to this address here on this farm. We had a person that was bailing hay and something caught the hay bell on fire and caught the field on fire,” said Martin.

Around 5 acres burned on the field during that fire.

“Hopefully we’ll have some rain. We have some rain forecast for the next several days this weekend. Then cooler temperatures, but with a low humidity of 25% and 100 degrees, a fire really burns good unfortunately,” said Martin.

Martin said that if you have a fire, immediately call 911. The department had to take extra precautions which included frequent breaks in between extinguishing the fires.

“Be very careful with outdoor burning, so the best advice is just don’t do it,” said Martin.

Chief Martin says there have been a total of eight fires in the last three days in Hardin County.

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