Macklin area farmers are on edge with an arsonist lighting bales on fire in the ditches.

Justin Bast who is the Volunteer Fire Chief at the Macklin & District Fire/Rescue says, “We haven’t had any rain in the last week and a half and there’s nothing really forecasted so once the crops start ripening and ditches get a lot drier there’s a lot more opportunity for bad things to happen, that’s for sure.”

Bast estimates the fires are started about 80 per cent of the time during daytime hours although there have been a few set in the evening and early morning hours. He says there has been 13 incidents in a 15 to 25 kilometre radius around Macklin. The fires started July 29, and the last fire was this past Saturday. Although he says Sunday farmers found bales that the arsonist tried to light but it didn’t light, so realistically Sunday, they should have had a call about a fire on yet another big bale stack.

Chief Bast says they have been fortunate so far and the fires haven’t spread to become a much bigger issue in the form of a grass fire. Farmers in the area are being asked to gather up bales in the ditches as quickly as they can, and their town Fire Board has offered $3,000 reward for information which will identify who is starting the fires.