Care Needed As Drought Continues
Last updated Saturday, January 7, 2006 11:13 PM CST in Opinion
Warm prairie winds swept across the flat plains picking up the dry soil and creating choking clouds of dust in parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and New Mexico in the 1930s.
A combination of poor farming practices and a sustained period of drought created the "Dust Bowl" era.
Dust Bowl was a term born from the hard times of the people who lived in the drought-stricken region during the great depression. The term was first used in a dispatch from Robert Geiger, an AP correspondent in Guymon, Okla., and within a few short hours was used all over the nation.
While the Dust Bowl was a unique event, farming practices have improved and dozens of lakes have been built over the past 70 years to provide a dependable source of water, droughts are a recurring force of nature.
Arkansas and parts of Texas and Oklahoma are tinder dry again. Grass fires have devoured thousands of acres and destroyed scores of homes in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas recently. Earlier this week many of the famous bathhouses in Hot Springs were threatened by a fast-moving fire sweeping across the mountain behind the structures.
While the year-long drought has dropped Beaver Lake to it's lowest level in years water officials reassure residents there is no danger of water shortages, although conservation remains a common sense approach to protecting the lake.
The biggest danger of the drought in Northwest Arkansas continues to be grass or timber fires. Burn bans are in effect for Washington and Benton counties.
Despite the ban some residents -- whether out of ignorance or simple disregard of the law -- continue to throw lighted cigarettes from car windows and to burn trash and brush, running the risk of starting a blaze that could be as bad if not worse than the recent fires in Texas and Oklahoma.
Rain in significant amounts over several months is the only sure cure for drought and there is little we mere mortals can do to hasten a return to a more normal weather pattern.
This drought won't last forever. The jet stream will change direction at some point in the near future. Moisture from the Gulf of Mexico billowing up as clouds swept along by southern winds will bring rain back to the area.
Until that happens we need to remember the burn ban is serious business. While it's impossible to protect grass and wooded land from every fire possibility we can reduce the chance of starting a fire by simply being careful.
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