Our cold, snowy spring in southeastern Manitoba has resulted in a non-existent grass fire season.

By this time last year, the R.M. of Tache had already experienced a record-breaking grassfire season. Fire Chief Allan Rau says last spring they responded to the earliest grass fire in their station's history.

“Last year from January 1st to April 19th, we had five wildland fires and of those five, three were significant. The very first fire occurred on March 17th so that shows us exactly how different our springs are when it comes to wildfire responses in the RM of Tache.”

this point last year and we are at 69 this year. There have been two major differences, one was the grass and wildland fires which at this point in 2021 we had 12 and at this point in 2022 we have had none. On the other hand, motor vehicle collisions, we have had 30 this year as opposed to 17 last year so they kind of offset each other.”

That said Wiebe says he is glad they haven’t been out fighting wildfires noting “Fighting grass fires is very time consuming, it takes up a lot of hours, it takes up a lot of manpower.” He adds grass and brush fires are also very hard on their equipment.