Abandoned Campfires Near Roaring Lion Fire Diverted Helicopter, Majority of Recent Fire Starts Human Caused

The number of human caused wildfires during the first week of August has outpaced naturally occurring wildfires and fire prevention teams are warning the public to be more cautions.

Both of the current large blazes, the Roaring Lion Fire and the Copper King Fire are thought to be human caused. Frenchtown Rural Fire Department Spokesman Mel Holz, says that just this week unattended campfires had some unintended and dangerous consequences.

"As people go out recreating, they just need to understand if they have a campfire it needs to be dead out," Holz said. "We've had several campfires near the Roaring Lion Fire in Hamilton where a helicopter had to divert from the task that they were working on the fire to tackle an abandoned campfire that had got out of the ring."

Holz says, that the majority of fires in the region recently have been human caused.

"This past week, out of 28 new wildland fires, 16 have been human caused," Holz said. "That's a huge number and those are all preventable. So we just want to get the message out that if you are heading out this weekend and you are recreating, to please be careful and make sure that if you do have a campfire, that it is dead out."

Holz says abandoned campfires aren’t the only problem and reminds the public that open burning season is over and should not occur at this point of the year.