Despite the southeast slipping into steadily more dangerous territory on the provincial fire danger index, there haven't been many calls for the Estevan Fire Department in recent weeks. Sunday afternoon provided a reminder that dry conditions can easily lead to such fires, however. 

At about 12:30 on Sunday afternoon, crews were called to a wildland fire in the RM of Benson. When they arrived on-scene, they found the fire still very much active. There had been no controlled burns reported to the controlled burn hotline. 

"We worked with the farmers to bring it under control," said Fire Chief Dale Feser. "There was no loss of any structures or property. It was a slough between two acreage properties there. An ignition source is still unknown at this time here, so the fire is under investigation, but nothing seems to be too suspicious at this time."

Seeding is well underway in the southeast, and controlled burns have long since begun as well. Although neither of those has been determined to be the cause of this fire in particular, Feser still took a moment to issue a reminder. 

"It is still dry," he said. "We've been bouncing back and forth between the extreme and the high. Today we have a high indexing for fire danger, so exercise that extreme caution. When we see prolonged periods into the extreme, that's when we're going to start instituting some fire bans just to protect everyone."

It wasn't that long ago that a slightly drizzly weekend had brought the southeast into a more manageable place for fire danger indexing. The dry conditions persisted, however, and the fire danger index has risen right back up again after that brief respite. 

"We kind of teeter in and out, in and out," said Feser. "That's why we take a look at what the fire danger indexing is for that day. The key thing is to watch the temperature and what the wind is doing. Even if we're in the moderate but we have high wind conditions, it's still not an opportune time to conduct and controlled or prescribed burns."

Feser added that given just how dry it has been, with some people even calling this drought conditions, he's been very impressed by how safely people have been going about their jobs so far, which has resulted in fewer calls for service.