It’s easy to seem detached from the massive western wildfires living in the east.

But the City of Warren’s Street Landscape Committee heard about the reality on the ground during a Tuesday meeting.

Forester Cecile Stelter of the state Bureau of Forestry’s Cornplanter District, who recently returned from a stint working public affairs for fires in Oregon, told the committee that there has been a fire each month of the year in this area and said that is unusual.

Last week, federal officials said they are working two forest fires – one near Minister Creek and the other closer to Sheffield.

“(I) would encourage people to be very careful with burning,” Stelter told the committee, “especially on windy days. You have to be attentive to it, make sure it’s completely out.”

She told the committee most fires aren’t started by people that intended a fire to get out of hand. One of the fires on the ANF was caused by a campfire that was not completely extinguished.

The fire Stelter responded to in Oregon was also human caused.

“We’d encourage people to just be careful,” she said. “It is dry. (There are a) lot of dry grasses and dry fuels.”

And while the weather has turned here – several days of rain and snow in the forecast for Friday – more sustained precipitation would be needed to put these fires out.

“(You) have to get a real good soaking rain or snow that actually gets compacted to put the fire out,” she said, noting that there have been fires out west where the fire has raged below the snow.

“Snow does not eliminate the oxygen,” she said.

Crews out west are now, she explained, working to develop a “containment line.

“We don’t put them out,” she said. “Nature puts them out.”