BOSTON — Bay Staters should conserve water and avoid burning anything outdoors amid an “unprecedented” wildfire season that likely will not abate until significant rain — or seasonal frost — arrives, state and local fire officials said this week.

Warning of growing risks to fatigued firefighters, fire safety leaders and the Healey administration called on every household to play a role in ensuring crews have the resources they need and preventing new blazes from erupting.

“Now is not the time to burn leaves. Now is not the time to go outside and light a fire out back and sit around one of our stoves. It’s just not that time,” Healey said at a press conference on Tuesday in Middleton, which has had a wildfire burning for days. “My ask to the public is that you do everything you can to minimize the risks, to protect our communities, to conserve water, and to support our firefighters.”

Christopher Norris, chief of the Easthampton Fire Department, said that the amount and severity of brush fires this year has been “a lot” for the department to handle. In the past few weeks, Norris said the department has responded to a few small fires in Easthampton, mostly caused by illegal burning. But earlier this month, the department had crews battling flames in Northampton as part of a mutual aid response.

For six days, Norris said his department sent crews of four to work for 10-hour operational periods. These crews spent the entire time lugging chainsaws, water and other gear across rugged terrain as they helped to contain and extinguish the fires. Norris said that this kind of response comes with a cost, especially because the crews sent to Northampton were made up of off-duty firefighters being paid overtime, while on-duty crews continued responding to the already robust number of day-to-day calls coming into the station.

“The fatigue factor certainly does wear on them,” said Norris. “That fatigue factor is definitely starting to set in for firefighters across the state.”

Massachusetts has logged a massive increase in wildland fires this fall. The latest data count 212 fires in October, which Healey described as a 1,200% increase over October 2023, and another 261 fires in the first 12 days of November.

That’s a combined total of 473 fires burning 1,537 acres since Oct. 1 — nearly as much area affected in a six-week span as the 1,676 acres that burned in wildfires across all of 2023.

In an average year, Massachusetts experiences about 15 brush fires in October and 20 more in November, a spokesperson for the state Department of Fire Services said.

The spike in fires this year has made Norris and his colleagues more aware of the importance of having proper gear in a fire department. Norris explained that the gear crews would wear to take care of a structural fire is far heavier than the gear they wear for wildfires, noting that some departments with less funding are experiencing even more fatigue as they traverse challenging terrain while weighed down with that heavy equipment. He said Easthampton has felt grateful to have the appropriate supplies to address these calls.

Norris said that the need for water, especially a good rain or snowfall, is also becoming increasingly apparent.

“It’s rained sporadically over the past couple of days, but really nothing substantial,” he said. “You can go kick up the leaves outside and underneath it’s all dry again already.”

Healey did not announce any statewide limits on water use, but many communities have local restrictions in place during a drought deemed “critical” — the second-highest level of severity — in large areas, though in Hampshire County the drought level is “mild.”

The Department of Conservation and Recreation previously banned open flames and charcoal fires in state parks.

Still, Healey sought to emphasize that everyone can play a role in helping first responders.

“It’s really important that people do things like run their dishwasher less frequently. Make sure you’re running your washing machine only at full capacity. Take shorter showers. I’m going to tell my kids: take shorter showers. Fix plumbing leaks immediately,” Healey said. “This is important because we’ve got to conserve water because it’s being used right now to fight these fires. And finally, most importantly, no outdoor fires while these conditions continue.”

Dry spell continues

David Celino, DCR’s chief fire warden, said all of the wildfires in Massachusetts “are human-caused” because no lightning systems have been in the area in October or November. He cautioned that with current dry and windy conditions, there’s “no doubt” a campfire or burning debris will spread.

Celino said a dry spell began around late August, and paltry rainfall since then created conditions in which fire can spread easily.

Officials say rainfall across Massachusetts was “well below average” in October, and some parts of the state recorded “their lowest rainfall ever.”

“We have about 13 or 14 fires out there that went beyond that containment, and they’re going to stay active now until we get a season-ending event that brings a lot of precipitation, or snow, or finally, frost in the ground,” Celino said. “These fires are not going to go out.”

Westhampton Fire Chief David Antosz said that his town has been fortunate so far to not have experienced any brush fires, though his department has been on standby for fires in surrounding towns.

“In town, it would take pretty much all of our resources,” said Antosz. “The problem that these fires are causing now is that everything is so dry, these fires burn very deeply and they’re hard to extinguish… We’ve been fortunate not to have anything yet.”

Antosz credits Westhampton’s lack of fires to community compliance and local understanding of the current dangers of outdoor burning during this time. But he doesn’t see the problem getting better until some substantial precipitation douses the ground. He and his colleagues are hoping for substantial rain to fall over the region soon, but he noted that a good accumulation of snow would be even better, as it stays on the ground and seeps into it for a longer period of time.

State Fire Marshal Jon Davine urged residents to use caution not just with outdoor fires, but also anything that could create sparks or embers like power equipment. He said anyone who notices smoke or flames nearby should call 911 immediately.

“Any fire will spread quickly and will become very difficult to control,” Davine said. “The fire will burn wide and it will burn deep into the ground.”

Norris said that the most important piece to preventing these fires is public awareness and compliance.

“We’re just trying to get that cooperation from the community to not have recreational fires,” he said. “the potential for those recreational fires, when a gust of wind comes up and blows those hot embers, there’s good potential for those to spread substantially.”

Gazette reporter Alexa Lewis contributed to this report.