Despite fire growth, wildfire containment improving; rain desperately needed
As of press time Nov. 15, Western North Carolina was ablaze with 22 wildfires burning through more than 50 square miles in the seven western counties, and while that’s significantly more than the 14 fires that were burning 17.5 square miles at press time last week, firefighters are feeling good about how the week has gone.
“Fire managers are very happy with the progress that’s been made on this particular fire and a lot of the smaller fires that are around,” said Greg Smith, a public information officer assigned to the Tellico Fire who joined the effort from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “They’ve had real good opportunities to get in there and do a lot of good work. Many of the smaller fires are now in a patrol and monitor status.”
When Smith first arrived last week, air temperatures were higher, wind was brisker and humidity was lower than when he spoke to The Smoky Mountain News Nov. 14. The high-pressure system responsible for the change in conditions essentially put a cap on the fire, preventing the smoke from lifting and the fire from moving.
“With the higher humidities, it allows the firefighters to get in and do more work on the fire line,” Smith explained. “They don’t have to be chasing things around as much.”
Fire lines are expanses of cleared ground designed to rein the fire in, keep it from crossing to the other side. Building the lines is hard work, especially in remote areas where it’s not possible to use a bulldozer, and keeping them cleared of flammable leaves and branches is a constant battle.
But improved weather conditions allowed firefighters to make more progress on those lines than they had earlier in the effort, and containment percentages on many of the larger fires jumped as a result.
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On Nov. 8, the Boteler Fire was 25 percent contained and the Maple Springs Fire was 10 percent contained. The Tellico and Ferebee Fires, which have merged into one fire, were 25 and 80 percent contained, respectively. By Nov. 15, containment on the Boteler Fire had risen to 43 percent, Maple Springs was at 15 percent and Tellico/Ferebee was at 68 percent.
In addition, an entire laundry list of smaller fires has been relegated to patrol-and-monitor status, meaning that crews are on scene to put out any reignitions near the fire line but the fires are not in need of aggressive firefighting.
The Buck Creek, Falls, Grape Cove, Moses Creek, Jones Gap, Jarrett Knob, Wine Spring, Mulberry, Moss Knob, May Branch, Boardtree, Charley Creek, Ridge Gap, Cliffside and Whitewater fires are all under patrol-and-monitor management.
Strong response from firefighting crews across the country has played an enormous role in holding the fires to their current parameters. As of Tuesday morning, Nov. 15, 1,222 firefighters were battling fires in the Nantahala National Forest, according to Liza Simmons of the U.S. Forest Service. Another 440 people were fighting the Party Rock and Chestnut Knob fires further east. As of Monday, Nov. 14, 42 states were represented in the crews on scene, Smith said.
“Even little Rhode Island has someone here,” said Joe Mazzeo, a retired National Park Service employee from Massachusetts who traveled south to help the effort.
The response currently has 64 engines, six helicopters, one fixed wing aircraft, 16 dozers and four water tenders at its disposal, according to a fire update released Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 15.
And, despite the vast acreage affected by the fires — the smoke plumes are visible from space, as shown by NASA photography — there has been surprisingly little impact to life or property thus far.
Only four injuries have been recorded in conjunction with the firefighting effort, and those have been minor, said James Stone, a retired Forest Service employee joining the response from Idaho.
And, as of press time, no structures — including homes — have been damaged.
“That wasn’t by accident,” Stone said. “There was a lot of aggressive fire suppression that went into that.”
Residents along 13 Swain County roads and two Macon County roads were evacuated last week to allow firefighters to build containment lines and protect their homes against advancing fires, but Nov. 14 the Forest Service announced that those evacuations had been lifted and residents could return to their homes, all of which were still in existence. Fire lines were built alongside the Nantahala Outdoor Center, located near the Tellico/Ferebee Fire in the Nantahala Gorge, with firefighters lighting backburn fires within feet of the buildings in order to protect them from the oncoming wildfire.
“In general firefighters work 14 or 15 hours a day,” Stone said. “Some of the people are kind of in a holding mode waiting for initial attack starts or for problem areas to be redeployed. Some of these guys end up working a lot longer days. They start probably the same time we do — about seven in the morning — and they work till three the next morning.”
About 280 Swain County residents crowded into a fire update meeting Nov. 13 at Southwestern Community College’s Swain Campus, and that gathering alone was enough to see that gratitude for the firefighters tirelessly working to preserve their communities was high, Smith said. Gratitude has been running both ways.
“It’s really neat hearing both sides talk about each other because it takes everyone’s cooperation to address this,” he said.
Smith’s feeling optimistic, at the moment, about the direction the fight is going, but in reality it all hinges on the battle plan of the most powerful combatant engaged in the conflict — the weather.
“It depends a lot on the weather,” Smith said. “We’re in an unusual stretch of drought and a lot of folks are hoping and praying for rain, so it’s going to take some rain to change the situation.”
There are two ways to put a fire out — the weather can bring rain or snow to end it, or firefighters can build containment lines around the whole thing and fight to hold those lines until the fire burns out. The latter option requires hard work from many people and funding to keep them there.
And, with North Carolina and much of the Southeast experiencing historic dryness, it will take a lot of precipitation to get things wet enough to end the fire season.
No such weather is in either the short-range or long-range forecast.
“There’s no rain in the forecast for the next 10 days. We’re not seeing any (substantial) rain in the forecast for even the next couple of months,” said Cathy Dowd, public information officer for the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests.
The future of the fires will dictate the future of smoke pollution in the mountains. Once fires stop producing smoke, it should dissipate fairly quickly, Dowd said. However, it will take the existing fires a long time to burn out on their own — again, rain is needed — and new starts could set the timeline back even further.
“Some people say that there will still be people here in January, but that’s a wild guess,” Stone said. “I know that when they made room reservations for us they scheduled them to the first of December. Usually we’re committed for two weeks, but that’s more than two weeks.”
“They could be dealing with it (smoke) for the foreseeable future,” Smith said.
Help the cause
Firefighters need support as they continue to sustain long hours toward the effort to quell the wildfire blazes ravaging Western North Carolina. Here are two ways to help:
• Donate to your local fire department to enable them to continue supporting the larger firefighting effort.
• Say thank you to the families sending their loved ones in harm’s way to fight fires. Write a thank you note and place it in a stamped envelope with a return address, but leave the “to” name and address blank. Drop the note in boxes available near the front doors of incident command posts in Franklin and Hayesville. Firefighters will receive the notes to mail to their families.
