It appears safe to burn again.

Mississippi’s statewide burn ban has ended, lifted earlier thisweek by Gov. Haley Barbour after recent wet weather saturated thestate’s extremely dry conditions.

The burn ban was in place for almost a whole month, enacted on Oct.6 and lifted on Nov. 3. Similarly, Lincoln County’s own burn banlasted from Oct. 4 until the end of the Halloween month.

But did the burn ban work? Kind of, sort of, maybe…

According to data kept by the Mississippi Forestry Commission’sSouthwest District in Brookhaven, the 11-county district saw 200fires that burned 1,291 acres from Aug. 1 through Oct. 31. LincolnCounty experienced 21 fires that flamed on 166 acres during thesame time span.

During the month of October – when both the state and county burnbans were in place – the district saw 97 fires that spread across771 acres, while Lincoln County saw 10 fires singe 78 acres.

According to the numbers, half of the reported fires occurredduring one-third of the timeframe, and that timeframe was the onlymonth the burn bans were in effect.

But Lincoln County Civil Defense Director Clifford Galey said theburn ban was effective in Lincoln County.

“Once the word got out, people really took notice of it and triednot to burn,” he said. “We had very few that did burn after theburn ban was instituted.”

During October, the county’s volunteer fire departments were calledto several fires during the first week but only “one or two a week”after the burn ban was implemented, Galey said.

“We did run up on people who had no idea there was a burn ban inplace,” he said. “Once they did, they put their fires out andapologized.”

Lincoln County Service Forester Howard Stogner said several of thelocal fires the commission responded to were likely cases ofarson.

“We’ll have those anyway, burn ban or not,” he said. “There weresome people that did burn during the ban, but that was minorcompared to what could have happened. I think the ban did a goodjob.”

It’s also telling that forestry only issued two suppression charges- bills the commission sends to burn ban violators when their firesspread out of control and require its response – during theban.

Meanwhile, people are free to fire up those piles of leaves, burnthose cardboard boxes and light those barbeque pits and campfires… for now.

“I still caution people to be careful,” Galey said. “If we don’tget any more rain in the next week or so and the humidity remainslow and the wind stays high, it will dry out pretty quickly.”