The risk of wildfires across Michigan is very high due to dry conditions and a lack of rain in recent weeks. Dan Heckman is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources incident management team and says conditions like these aren’t common in Michigan.
“This is a unique situation for Michigan,” Heckman said. “We don’t typically see fire weather indexes this high for this long across this much area. That’s the situation that makes this rather significant.”
The state has had 193 wildfires this year, the largest in northern Michigan near Grayling this week. That fire burned more than 2,400 acres and was started by a campfire on private property. DNR officials say avoid burning right now.
