Mike Quesinberry’s Type 1 Incident Management Team assumed command Sunday of the 15,000-acre Pains Bay fire on the outer Banks of North Carolina (Google map of the area, scroll farther down this page for a fire perimeter map). The fire became more interesting Saturday when it moved onto a bombing range about 19 miles south of Manns Harbor.
Inciweb has an overview of the fire:
The Pains Bay Fire was reported on the afternoon of Thursday, May 5, 2011. It was mostly likely caused by lightning strikes in the wetlands on between Pains and Parched Corn Bays on the south side of US Highway 264 just south of Stumpy Point, NC. The burn area and it’s immediate projected path are located on Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Dare County, NC.
Low relative humidity, extremely dry and dense fuels, and gusty winds caused rapid spread of the fire. Immediate efforts were directed to keep the fire south of US Highway 264 and bewteen the two bays; hoever, by the afternoon of Friday, May 6, the fire had crossed the ditch at Parched Corn Bay and headed north on the east side of US Highway 264 and jumped US Highway 264 to the north and headed toward the Dare County Range- a US Air Force Practice site.
As the week progressed, the fire continued to spread. By Saturday evening, May 7, the fire had grown to over 15,000 acres and had crossed into the Dare County Range. At this point, the Pains Bay Fire became a multi-jurisdictional fire, managed jointly by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the NC Forest Service, who has fire suppression responsibility for the Dare County Range.
On Saturday, the Southern Area Blue Type 1 Team arrived on the Outer Banks to assume primary responsibility for the fire suppression efforts. Local firefighters from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the NC Forest Service, National Park Service, and Volunteer Fire Departments from Stumpy Point, Manns Harbor, Roanoke Island, and Colington will continue to provide local knowledge, experience, and resource to support this fire suppression effort.
Here is a map of the Pains Bay fire. The red line shows the active, uncontrolled fire edge.
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An update on the fire was posted on May 9, 2011.
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A May 11 update on the fire can be found here.
Re: Pains Bay Fire, we just arrived in Duck and the air quality and smell are horrible. Does anyone know the update on the fire? Does the air in the Duck area frequently like this? Thanks!
Current information about the Pains Bay fire is at InciWeb.
Bill,
This report comes up 7th and in the middle of the first page on a google search for “Pains Bay Fire” with this heading: Pains Bay fire burns 15000 acres on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. – 4:49pm
May 8, 2011 .It is really discouraging for the majority of the residents of the Outer Banks whose economy relies on tourism; and and I think I’m on safe ground here in speaking for thousands of fellow residents in this case, to have to deal with the fall-out, confusion and mis-perceptions that news articles of this nature with totally incorrect geographical associations can generate. If you’ll send me your personal email address or home phone number the next call I receive from a future guest wondering if the Beach Cottage they’ve reserved has burned I’ll just refer on to you. 😉 words matter
A while ago I fixed the title of the article, but the old title remained in the “SEO title”. I fixed that one today, but it might take a while for the search engine to discover the change. And I’ll get right on sending you my personal email and address and home phone number. 😉
Smoke on Hatteras Island has been very very bad at times ever since early Saturday morning when the wind shifted to the north. Sometimes so bad you can’t even see across the street depending upon which way the wind is shifting. A lot of people are sick from the smoke.
The smoke from the fire that reached us in Beaufort clearly smelled like burning rubber or some other man-made substance. Does anyone know why that is?
It’s the peat. Basicly peat lying under the ground is closely related to “soft coal” as it is less weighted organic material. Thus the oil/rubbery smell you will get. Fast moving brush fires smell like wood or lightly rotted vegatation. Hot, deep fires hit the peat just below the surface and smolder. Nothing up there but the highway is man-made.
One small note – this fire is in the *mainland* section of Dare county, near lake Mattamuskeet (one of the largest waterbird wintering areas in Eastern North America). Dare county includes the Outer Banks, including Cape Hatteras, but that’s not where this fire is.
The fire is in deep, swampy land — very hard to get resources in to fight the fire. Too bad that the State of NC decided to sell its CL-215 scooper air tanker to “save money”.