HARTFORD — The town’s firefighters responded to nearly simultaneous brush fires ignited by gusty winds over the weekend as officials urged the public to make doubly sure outdoor fires are thoroughly extinguished amid the spring wildfire season.

The first brush fire was reported early Sunday afternoon along Route 14 north of Tigertown Road, where two-thirds of an acre burned as a blaze moved east and jumped railroad tracks, reported Hartford Fire Chief Scott Cooney.

Fire departments from Hartford, Sharon and Pomfret, along with Hartford police worked to contain and extinguish the fire, whichCooney said was likely caused by Sunday’s gusty winds igniting embers remaining from a “controlled burn” a few days earlier.

Hartford firefighters were finishing up their work on the West Harford fire when they were dispatched at around 4 p.m. to a second brush fire at an address on Murphy Road in Quechee.

When Hartford units arrived at the scene they discovered “a large pile of grass clippings that was on fire,” Cooney said.

“And when I say large, I’m talking it would fill the back of a couple dump trucks,” he said.

The pile of grass clippings is where Quechee Club dumps clippings from its golf course, Cooney said. Like the West Hartford brush fire, he said, there had been a controlled burn of the grass clippings pile a few days prior and Sunday’s winds likely ignited remaining embers.

In addition to burning only on the days authorized by a burn permit, Cooney said the “message of the day” from Sunday’s two fires is “to make sure you completely extinguish your fire before you leave it unattended.”

He advised the way to do that is by “using copious amounts of water and stirring your coals and embers to make a wet slurry of mud. That’s because the fire not only goes up but actually burns down into the ground as well.”

On Monday, New Hampshire authorities warned of “high fire danger” and an “extended fire weather forecast,” noting that wind gusts of up to 25 mile-per-hour coupled with low humidity combined for elevated risk.

In a news release to kick off the state’s annual Wildfire Awareness Week on Monday, the New Hampshire Forest Protection Bureau said 72% of the state is “currently experiencing abnormally dry conditions.”

In 2024, the number of wildfires in New Hampshire increased 24% and the number of acres burned nearly doubled compared with the previous year, the news release said. Thirty-seven structures were threatened by wildfires, of which four were destroyed.

Grafton County had by far the highest number of wildfires — about 48 out of a statewide total of 123 — among the state’s 10 counties last year, according to state fire warden data. (Grafton County ranked sixth in terms of the total of 125 acres in the state lost to wildfires).

But a “wildfire” is not necessarily confined to the wild, officials note.

“Many homes in New Hampshire are located in what’s called ‘the wildland urban interface,’ or ‘WUI,’ which means they’re where homes and other structures are built in or near wildfire fuels like forests and fields,” Forest Protection Bureau Chief Steven Sherman said in the news release.

Although late fall when the ground and woods are covered with dried leaves might seem the time of greatest risk for wildfires, early spring presents a deceptively dangerous period.

“As we get rid of the snowmelt and lose the moisture pack from the winter months, we go through this spell of a dry season before things green up again. Right now things are dry and very brittle so the fire danger is high. So we’re prone to fires this time of year,” Cooney said.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.