North Carolina wildfires: USFS explains strategy behind containment efforts and challenges
McDowell County wildfire is currently burning south of Wild Acres Road and north of Armstrong Creek Road. The fire is near Little Switzerland. It's prompted evacuationsfor all residences on Wild Acres Road and Wild Acres Retreat.
By Marc Liverman
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ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (WLOS) — While the weather is helping to contain wildfires across Western North Carolina, it has been a long and difficult season for firefighters.
With all the recent news coverage, you may be curious about how wildfires are contained and how crews measure this.
More importantly, you might be asking, why does it even matter?
News13 spoke with Dana Hodde, a public information officer with the U.S. Forest Service, to find some answers.
“What’s more important is that we’re working towards boxing in the fire and putting physical boundaries between the fire and us,” Hodde said.
For crews, she said it’s all about boxing that blaze in with boundaries like lines manually dug up by crews. Sometimes, those barriers are already in place thanks to natural barriers like rivers or roads.
Containment is dependent on things like the natural features and intensity of wildfires, which is why for crews on the front lines, it’s all about adapting.
“If it’s moving so fast that even if we put it in, it would just jump right over it, then it’s not worth it,” she said. “So sometimes we have to go out a little bit further and give it a little bit more room.”
Hodde said a containment percentage is only calculated when the fire reaches the boundaries crews created and only after they’ve done what’s called a “mop up.”
“So they’ll spray everything down with a hose, find any hot spots that they can find just to make sure everything is truly out and that the fire will not restart,” Hodde added.
So the next time you hear the word containment, just know it means the fire’s hit those boundaries and if everything’s gone to plan, it’ll run out of fuel and hopefully stop growing.
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