Spring cleaning means time to be aware of burning debris hazards

Its spring and everyone has been cleaning their yard of debris, making piles of brush that they will be burning soon. Do you know the rules for burning in your area? Do you know you can be fined for burning prohibited items? Do you know what those items are? The DNR (Department of Natural Resources) publishes regulations for outdoor burning.

Here are the highlights of those regulations and there is much more to read on the DNR Homepage and search for “open burning”. Open burning is defined as burning any material outdoors without any air pollution controls in place. Burning in an unconfined area, a container or a pile is all considered to be open burning. Burning solid waste materials, such as treated wood, plastic, household garbage and most other trash is prohibited statewide, and local ordinances may be more stringent than statewide requirements.

It is legal to burn items such as leaves, brush and clean wood under some circumstances. However, you need to make sure you have any necessary burn permits and call in your controlled burn. It is always better to use alternative disposal methods, including composting, recycling and landfilling.

Numbers in the Clinton area to report your burn are (608) 757-2244 (Rock County Dispatch) and (608) 676-5550 (Clinton Fire Station) you must call prior to lighting any fires. Stop by the fire station if you have any questions and/or for a copy of the regulations.

Everyone should understand that by calling these numbers you are not granted permission to burn anything you want. Many times we get calls after someone has logged a controlled burn and a neighbor sees heavy black smoke or smells plastics being burned.

You are responsible to know what you are allowed to burn and keep your burn under control. Debris burning is the number one cause of fires in Wisconsin. Using burn barrels is an unhealthy (and sometimes illegal) method of garbage disposal. If you choose to burn debris or use a burn barrel, follow the guidelines below.

It is illegal to burn asphalt, garbage, metal, petroleum products, plastics; rubber and painted or treated wood. These materials release toxic pollutants into the air and are recognized as a significant health risk and public nuisance. Burning recyclable paper or cardboard is also prohibited.

Before burning, consider other more environmentally friendly options like composting and recycling. Burning also has health concerns for both you and your neighbors who have to live with the smoke from your debris burning. Here are some helpful burning guidelines.

You must be present while your pile is burning. Do not place your debris pile under conifer trees or within 25 feet of any structure. Have fire-fighting tools on site (garden hose, shovel or rake). Do not burn if it is windy. Clear an area down to mineral soil around your debris pile to create a “fire break.”

Once the objective of your burn is completed, be sure to “mop-up” the ashes with water and stirring. Often wildfires are started from “holdover” debris piles that were not properly extinguished, days or even weeks after they were burned. There are still many burn barrels in our area and they cause many uncontrolled wildfire every year.

It is pretty easy to find the source of a wildfire when you walk right back to the burn barrel or trash pile in someone’s back yard. Did you know that the average adult breathes about 20,000 times each day and that both children and the elderly face a greater risk of being affected by air pollution, as do people with heart, respiratory or other ailments.

Pollutants from burn barrels vary depending on the type of waste materials burned but, typically, emissions include dioxins, ash, furans, halogenated hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, lead, barium, chromium, cadmium, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, arsenic or mercury.

Burn barrels also often emit acid vapors and carcinogenic tars. Pound for pound, garbage burned in a burn barrel gives off twice as many furans, 17 times as much dioxin, and 40 times as much ash as a municipal incinerator.

For example, a 1997 EPA study showed that two-to-40 households burning garbage produce as much dioxin as a 200 ton/day municipal incinerator operating with air pollution controls.

Also, municipal incinerators operate at 2,200 degrees F to insure complete combustion, and they use efficient filters to reduce harmful emissions. Burn barrels emit more pollutants because they operate at relatively low temperatures (400-500 degrees F), resulting in incomplete combustion of the wastes being burned.

They also are less efficient at combustion and emissions are concentrated close to the ground, thus creating a greater risk of direct exposure to harmful pollutants. The closer you stand to the burn barrel, the more of these harmful chemicals you may inhale. Residual ash is another result of incomplete combustion.

Frequently, a significant portion of material in the barrel – especially at the bottom – is not burned up. Ash disposal outside of a sanitary landfill can cause problems.

Also, ash particulates can irritate the eyes and throat and can restrict visibility. In addition, ash may damage the lungs, cause bronchitis, emphysema, and lung cancer, and can seriously affect people with asthma or certain allergies. Ash also contains heavy metals that may seep into groundwater. I will have more about “open burning” next week.

The most devastating fire in United States history is ignited in Wisconsin on this day in 1871. Over the course of the next day, 1,200 people lost their lives and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames. Despite the massive scale of the blaze, it was overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire, which began the next day about 250 miles away.

Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was a company lumber and sawmill town owned by William Ogden that was home to what was then one of the largest wood-products factories in the United States. The summer of 1871 was particularly dry across the northern Midwest. Still, settlers continued to set fires, using the “slash and burn” method to create new farmland and, in the process, making the risk of forest fire substantial. In fact, the month before had seen significant fires burn from Canada to Iowa.

Peshtigo, like many Midwestern towns, was highly vulnerable to fire. Nearly every structure in town was a timber-framed building–prime fuel for a fire. In addition, the roads in and out of town were covered with saw dust and a key bridge was made of wood. This would allow a fire from outside the town to easily spread to Peshtigo and make escaping from a fire in the town difficult.

On Sept. 23, the town had stockpiled a large supply of water in case a nearby fire headed in Peshtigo’s direction. Still, they were not prepared for the size and speed of the October 7 blaze. The blaze began at an unknown spot in the dense Wisconsin forest.

It first spread to the small village of Sugar Bush, where every resident was killed. High winds then sent the 200-foot flames racing northeast toward the neighboring community of Peshtigo. Temperatures reached 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing trees to literally explode in the flames.

On Oct. 8, the fire reached Peshtigo without warning. Two hundred people died in a single tavern. Others fled to a nearby river, where several people died from drowning. Three people who sought refuge in a water tank boiled to death when the fire heated the tank.

A mass grave of nearly 350 people was established because extensive burns made it impossible to identify the bodies. Despite the fact that this was the worst fire in American history, newspaper headlines on subsequent days were dominated by the story of another devastating, though smaller, blaze: the Great Chicago Fire.

Another fire in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that consumed 2 million acres was an even smaller footnote in the next day’s papers. This history comes from the History Channel.

Until next week, stay safe

Chief Rindfleisch