WBRZ - Baton Rouge

INDEPENDENCE - A wildfire torched acres of woods behind a neighborhood in Livingston Parish.

Firefighters worked over the weekend to put out the blaze, but some trees and shrubs continue to smolder.

"You saw pretty quickly this wasn't any fire you were going to throw some buckets of water on and be able to control," Kate Simmons said. She and her husband were walking through the woods behind her home when they saw the flames.

"We've been getting a tremendous amount of reports of fire departments getting an increased load of wildfires, about 35 percent increase that we've documented of the past 30 days," State Fire Marshal Butch Browning said. That's why he issued a state-wide burn ban that goes into effect Wednesday morning.