Two large fires continue to burn through swamps in the southeastern United States, providing serious challenges for firefighters who have difficulty safely accessing the fire perimeters to take suppression action. Sometimes fires in swamps burn for months, or until heavy, long-duration rains fall, in spite of the best efforts of firefighters.
The Pains Bay fire is burning on the coast of North Carolina in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. It grew by 571 acres on Tuesday bringing the total to 21,563 blackened acres. Burnout operations on the northeast side continued on Wednesday.
Here is a map showing the perimeter of the Pains Bay fire (provided by firefighters), along with symbols representing heat detected by satellites.
The Honey Prairie fire, mostly in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, grew by 13,174 acres on Tuesday bring the total to 96,408 acres in both Georgia and Florida.
The Florida Division of Forestry staff along with support from local timber companies, Georgia Forestry Commission and Refuge resources assigned to the fire had a very busy day Tuesday along the southern flank near the Florida- Georgia border. Fuel reduction firing operations of forested areas North of Florida Highway 2 were initiated to expand the size of this existing fire break.
The northeastern portion of the fire is approximately one mile from Chesser Island and 12 miles from Folkston, Georgia. The westernmost flank of the fire is approximately eight miles east of Fargo, Georgia.
This map of the Honey Prairie fire also shows the perimeter of the fire (provided by firefighters) along with symbols representing heat detected by satellites.
Here is a photo of the fire taken the day after it started on April 28.
US-64 is open. US-264 between Stumpy Point and Englehard is closed.
It’s pretty smoky. I was “near” US 64 on Monday; it was generally clear until you crossed the Aligator River but there was heavy smoke over the bridges between the mainland and Roanoke Island. A lot depends on how the wind is blowing. I don’t know if the road is officially closed but I would guess not.
Does anyone have an update on the Alligator Refuge fire? I will be travelling to Greenville along Route 64 from the Outer Banks this weekend and I need to know if the fires are still making I-64 unpassable on this journey.
L. Freeman, you asked, so, check out this new post I wrote today:
https://wildfiretoday.com/2011/05/19/north-carolina-pains-bay-fire-update-may-19/
Almost every forest type on the east coast is fire adapted, with many/most of them fire-dependent. Its dry, its spring fire season in teh south, and agencies have been cutting their firefighting budgets. Voila- we have bigger fires.
Yes, “almost every forest type” on the east coast if fire-adapted — unfortunately, the great exception to that rule is the “plantation” pine lands, planted in mostly pond-pine and slash-pine, used for growing pulpwood for paper. It’s very poorly fire-adapted, the individual trees are crowded together, there’s little space for needle-fall litter to dissipate (leading to thick buildup of fuel material of the forest floor), and these pine varieties selectively take up soil nutrients. These varieties also are weed-like in their spread to otherwise healthy habitats.
Besides their poor fire-adaptation, tendency to burn hot and spread wild fire, difficulty in fighting fires that occur, and other eco damage, these plantations are seen by their owners has “high value”. Also, these pine types were selected to be fast growing but their growth characteristics mean that a lot of their foliage is lower to the ground — this results in almost any fire “topping” quickly, thus causing general destruction to the individual trees and forest acreage.
Another feature is large forest areas adjacent to or intermingled with swamps and poccossin areas. Wild fires in these areas tend to spread into large fires because it’s so difficult to get resources to fire spread areas to effect control and containment. If these areas are “contaminated” by the non-native pulpwood pine types, that increases the difficulty in fighting fires in them. These fires tend to expand into large acreages because containment is so difficult.
As much as I’d like to see big acreages in long-leaf pine with healthy under-story ecosystems, I know that’s not going to happen. In the meantime, we’re stuck with a prefect storm of poorly managed “farmed” forests, lack of natural burning and fire adaptation, little understanding (public and political) of the risks, and pinched public budgets. And I don’t see it getting better soon.
Sometimes fire-adapted means “adapted to regenerate after complete destruction by fire”, so I would argue that dense pond pine woodlands are fire adapted, and stand-replacement fires are relatively commonplace in the east in certain types of terrain.
The most common plantation pine species, loblolly and slash (native trees, ftw!), are at high risk for fire for part of their life cycle, but not indefinitely. Once the canopies close, self-pruning removes lower branches. This is a desired attribute in plantations since it reduces knots- and the occurrence of crowning.
While you cite the general idea of plantations as a fire risk, I think you get at the root cause of increased fire risk in plantations in your last paragraph. Poor management of these forests is responsible for much of that risk. Proper site selection, thinning, and prescribed fire result in a resilient healthy forest with a fire risk that is equal to or below that of unmanaged forests of the same species.
I am involved in a couple of efforts that seek to increase the acreage of native longleaf pine forests. Lets hope, for both of us, that those efforts are successful. Without forest restoration and active management, we are probably destined for more of the same.
i wonder why all of a sudden we have these fires on the east coast
ok what else do ya need