“Please don’t burn”; Firefighters in East Feliciana battle multiple fires every day

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry is investigating what sparked a fire Tuesday evening that turned into 15 separate burns along Highway 67 in East Feliciana Parish.

Bluff Creek Deputy Fire Chief Darryl Buhler and his volunteer crews are now working around the clock to extinguish this and several others. Bühler, who is also the community’s homeland security director, put a burning ban into effect almost two weeks ago. Since then there have been around 30 fires. This means that the emergency services fight around seven fires per day. Buehler fears that at this rate they will exceed the nearly 80 fires they fought during the ban last year, with no relief from rain in sight. This year, however, they are trying something different.

“We actually sent our members home with the trucks instead of going to the fire station, picking them up and responding. You can respond directly from there and we were on site within five minutes of most fires,” said Bühler.

He believes the best way to fight fires is to prevent them.

“We are the only community in this area with a fire ban, but we are the ones fighting all of these fires right now,” Buehler explained. “That’s why we put it into action, to get people to stop, not burn.”

Buehler said you can help crews by calling if you see smoke or flames throughout the community and don’t burn anything during the ban.

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