Excellent time-lapsed photos of the Silver Mine Fire in NC

Above: A burnout operation on the Silver Mine Fire, April 26, 2016. InciWeb photo.

When we saw the photos below of the Silver Mine Fire burning very close to Hot Springs, North Carolina we had to share them. It’s the only time we have seen photos taken of a fire at the same spot just a few hours apart but one is in daylight and the other was after sunset. The first in each pair was taken between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. on April 26 and the other was at 9:45 to 10:30 p.m. The photos were taken by a resident of Hot Springs, Kevin Reese.

The fire started April 21 and since then has burned 3,000 acres. On Tuesday firefighters ignited a burnout operation on the north side of the fire using a helicopter. If all of the burnouts go as planned, the fire perimeter could be as large as 4,600 acres when the fire is contained.

Silver Mine Fire

Silver Mine Fire

Silver Mine Fire

Silver Mine Fire

Silver Mine Fire map
Map of the southern portion of the Silver Mine Fire at 5 p.m. April 25, 2016. The red dashed line was the fire perimeter at that time. The town of Hot Springs, NC is on the left. The map was produced by “Stratton”. InciWeb has the complete map.

North Carolina: Whipping Creek Fire

Above: Whipping Creek Fire, April 20, 2016. IMT photo.

(UPDATED at 4:07 p.m. EDT, April 25, 2016)

The Whipping Creek Fire in eastern North Carolina has grown by almost a couple of thousand acres, to 15,449, since we wrote about it yesterday.

On Sunday, two CL-415 water-scooping air tankers made 126 rounds dropping a total of 203,112 gallons of water to strengthen control lines. Firefighters continue to construct and improve containment lines to support and monitor the fire perimeter for flare-ups. There are now 153 personnel assigned to the fire, primarily from the North Carolina Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Below is an excellent map showing the daily progression of the fire.

Whipping Creek Fire pregression map

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(Originally published at 10:13 a.m. EDT, April 24, 2016)

The Whipping Creek Fire has burned 13,773 acres in eastern North Carolina six miles northeast of Engelman and 75 mile east of Greenville. On April 18 two fires on private land merged, and the next day spread onto the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and the Dare Bombing Range.

On Sunday US Highway 264 will be closed to enable two CL-415 water-scooping air tankers from Minnesota to work on the northeast perimeter of the fire. The aircraft will scoop water from the Alligator River and deliver it to the fire every six minutes, according to the Incident Management Team. Some of the water drops delivered on each run will occur adjacent to US 264.

map Whipping Creek Fire
The yellow dots represent heat detected by a satellite on the Whipping Creek Fire, April 19-22, 2016.
Whipping Creek Fire
Damaged power pole along US 264. IMT photo.

Roundup of wildfire activity in the eastern United States

While most areas in the western United States, with the exception of parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, wait for their fuels and weather to dry out, many firefighters in the east have been busy lately. The Intelligence section at the National Interagency Fire Center is too busy this time of the year to issue a daily Situation Report, so we assembled information about a number of fires east of the Mississippi River.

Tennessee
A prescribed fire conducted by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) that got out of control in Blount County on Wednesday has burned 400 to 500 acres as of Thursday morning. TWRA officials said the wind picked up unexpectedly while they were treating a unit in the Foothills Wildlife Management area.

A fire in the Cherokee National Forest has burned 150 acres six miles north of Unicoi. Additional aircraft, dozers, engines, and firefighters have been ordered. (The tweet below is about this fire.)

North Carolina
Mike Martin’s brush pile he was burning behind his house Wednesday near Etowah escaped as winds blew flames onto his porch. He went to grab two five-gallon buckets of water, but by the time he returned it was too late. He tried to go into the house to retrieve his car keys, but the fire was too hot. Both the Ford SUV and the house were destroyed even though the fire department responded quickly from their station two miles away.

A fire in the Nature Conservancy’s Nags Head Woods Preserve blackened about 250 acres on the Outer Banks. It started on March 22 and spread for three days.

New Jersey
A wind-driven brush fire burned 86 acres in Port Republic Wednesday afternoon. With help from two water-dropping helicopters, about 30 firefighters stopped the spread.

North Carolina wildfire managed with limited suppression activity

Bald Knob fire

When most people hear of wildfires that are managed with a strategy of limited suppression they think of fires in remote areas of the western United States. But last summer the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina managed the Bald Knob Fire for over a month until it was knocked out by rain after burning 1,200 acres, only taking suppression action when it was absolutely necessary. Other fires in the Southeast have been managed in a similar manner but they don’t get the publicity western fires receive.

The firefighters in North Carolina benefited greatly from an adjacent 1,950-acre prescribed fire unit, a portion of which had been completed just six months before. Both that prescribed fire and another 120-acre project served as barriers to significant spread of the wildfire.

Below is an excerpt from a report about the management of the Bald Knob Fire:

The James Lake prescribed burn was treated six months prior to the wildfire and stopped the Bald Knob fire on the southeastern edge, creating a barrier to nearby communities and private land. The Clinchfield prescribed burn, treated last year, provided protection to several nearby residents west of the wildfire by allowing firefighters to utilize existing fuels breaks to contain the wildfire. Likewise, the Dobson Knob prescribed burn, treated last year, would have provided control opportunities for fire fighters had the wildfire grown that large towards the northeast. All of these treatments were critical in containing the fire and were used in the decision for managing the fire for resource benefit.

Existing lines from the surrounding prescribed burns were used in the confine and contain strategy for the Bald Knob fire. The only prescribed fire area that experienced fire activity in the Bald Knob fire was the Lake James burn. On August 5th, a localized thunderstorm with high winds allowed the wildfire to spot across the control line into the Lake James burn unit.

The Lake James fuel treatment clearly influenced the spread of the wildfire. FLN monitoring plots in the Lake James treatment area showed a significant reduction in Mountain Laurel and Rhododendron shrub height throughout the burn unit. The decrease in this highly volatile live fuel within the burn unit when compared to the surrounding untreated area was likely significant in reducing spread of the wildfire. The Clinchfield and Dobson knob prescribed burn units experienced a similar reduction in Mountain Laurel and Rhododendron, providing a fuel break that supported the management decision.

Bald Knob Fire
The Bald Knob Fire, which started on July 14, is in the top-center of the image, in pink and red. All images are from the USFS report. Click to enlarge.

Bald Knob Fire

The report, which can be download here (4.7Mb), is mostly well written and very informative. We like how they overlaid weather stat graphics with a transparent background over the Google Earth image — very creative. On the other hand, one of the other graphics uses 10 shades of red and 5 shades of blue on one map to represent 15 different wildfires and prescribed fires. We are fairly certain a plethora of very different colors are available that would make the map more useful.

Sky lanterns ignite cell phone tower

Cell tower fire sky lantern
Cell tower fire ignited by sky lanterns. Screen grab from video at TWCNews.

What could possibly go wrong when dozens of sky lanterns or fire balloons were released from the Carolina Speedway in Gastonia, North Carolina last weekend? The wind blew some of them into a cell phone tower, igniting it just out of range of the water cannon on the Union Road Volunteer Fire Department’s fire engine.

Below is an excerpt from TWCNews, which has a video with more images of the tower fire:

“…My first thought was I hope this is not what’s fixing to happen. But it wound up happening. Our second thought was how are we going to get that far up to put the fire up,” said Union Road Volunteer Fire Department Chief Craig Huffstetler.

The Union Road Fire Department was already on hand in case there were any injuries or brush fires. But the cell phone tower quickly threw several challenges their way. Their ladder truck couldn’t reach all the way up to the fire, there were no fire hydrants nearby, and they’d never fought a fire quite like this one.

It took 20 firefighters, nearly 6,000 gallons of water, help from a neighboring department. And maybe a little luck to finally get the fire out.

These dangerous devices have started dozens of fires and are illegal in at least 25 states. Entire countries have banned them, including Austria, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Spain, Germany and parts of Canada. The National Association of State Fire Marshals adopted a resolution in 2013 urging states to ban the sale and use of the devices.

The other 25 states need to get off their collective asses and ban these damn things.

Articles on Wildfire Today tagged sky lantern.

North Carolina fire threatens 89 homes, spreads to 500 acres

The Compass Pointe fire in Brunswick County has forced nearly a 100 households to evacuate as the fire spread to 500 hundred acres in southern North Carolina.

Here’s a few facts about the blaze, from the North Carolina Forest Service:

— Fire is contained at 500 acres. It spread from 15 acres at initial attack.

— 89 homes threatened and evacuated. The Compass Pointe subdivision, off U.S. Route 74 and and U.S. Route 76 was emptied. Residents were allowed back in by 6 p.m. on Monday, a local TV news station reported. 

–5 homes damaged. 1 outbuilding lost, 1 boat damaged and 1 pull-behind trailer lost.

— 8 tractor plows, two helicopters and 3 SEATs responded.

Access to the fire, which is burning in the southern tip of the state, proved tricky for crews. Trains going through the area had to be stopped, and fire crews had to work around tracks and pipelines transporting flammable gasses. The fire threatened a local water treatment plant, and sent embers into flower beds, onto roofs and across many roads.

The fire’s cause remains unknown, said county Fire Marshal Scott Garner. There were no prescribed burns in the area.