Ever since the hurricane blew down millions upon millions of trees in Western North Carolina, we've known that the drying wood would create substantial wildfire hazard. Much of it is in inaccessible regions, and there aren't adequate resources even to clean up populated regions -- there's been very limited government response, both state and federal, though the locals have done yeoman work. Wildfire is going to happen sooner or later, unless we get a very wet few years that eventually reduces it to rotting wood.
Right now all of the evacuation zones are on the other side of I-26 from me. It's a pretty good firebreak, being a wide concrete interstate. I saw that Montana has sent us some firefighting aircraft, for which I am grateful. I imagine they will be staged at AVL airport, very near to the evacuation zone. UPDATE: They are staging out of Chattanooga. Big lake there.
Locally to me we rolled on two fires yesterday, but neither of them got out of control. There's a statewide ban on outdoor burning here and in South Carolina as well. This morning our local Emergency Management team went to Readiness Plan 5, which is their highest level of staffing in expectation of trouble.
UPDATE:
Just across the border in South Carolina, there's a mandatory evacuation zone too.
6 comments:
Yep, Table Rock, not too far from Caesar's Head.
New one south of Bryson City, and a so-far small one near Sylva. It’s very dry.
There's also one at Warwoman on the Georgia side of the Chattooga river. It was really smoky in Walhalla today
I heard about that one down near Rabun Gap. I haven't seen a map for it yet.
Now I can't speak to the wisdom of evacuation orders there, maybe it's wise, but my feelings over the years out West watching the fires is that we are way overusing the evacuation orders as a matter of policy. Drive through the Palisades fire area or Eaton fire area in Altadena (near me) and you'll see house after house after house burned, but most of the vegetation around them maybe singed in most cases. When we have these wind driven grass/brush fires, it seems to me that having more hands around putting out spot fires caused by embers would do far more to contain these types of fires than making everyone leave and putting the entire burden on the Fire Departments. At any rate, my plan is to stay if a fire threatens my home, or my Mother's (though we'll evacuate her). Certainly there are many who should evacuate, but I dislike the quickness with which they issue the orders, and the breadth of scope of said orders.
I'll add that as an example of a fire where evacuations were absolutely the right call was Paradise.
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