46 blazes break out across Va.; high winds, dry conditions cited
BY PETER BACQUE | TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER | Thursday, March 16, 2006
Wind-spurred wildfires flared up around the state yesterday, closing roads, forcing evacuations and prompting additional burning bans.
Officials shut state Route 30 in West Point for hours yesterday as fire departments from the region battled to subdue a fire at the Smurfit-Stone paper mill and clogged the highway with firefighting equipment.
The fire began in a yard where recyclable paper is stored, said West Point Police Chief William L. Hodges. That blaze kindled grass fires in the lawns of nearby homes, though no injuries or damage to structures were reported.
Residents fled in the face of a 50-acre fire in Gloucester County, while low humidity, strong winds and dry conditions sparked a 200-acre fire in Clarke County.
Firefighters were making progress at bringing the Clarke and Gloucester blazes under control late yesterday, officials said.
The day's high winds helped spawn the rash of fast-spreading fires, officials said. For instance, winds gusted as high as 41 mph in Richmond and 45 mph in Northern Virginia.
"A little tiny spark can grow quickly with these 20 to 25 mile per hour winds," said John Campbell, a spokesman for the state Department of Forestry.
Forty-six fires broke out during the day yesterday. So far this year, 577 wildfires have burned 3,732 acres in Virginia, not including fires in the national forests, the state forestry agency said.
In Richmond, firefighters battled a brush fire on Belle Isle yesterday, and on Tuesday two fires burned about 35 acres of woodlands in Chesterfield County.
"Virginia is more than 5 inches short on rainfall," said John Miller, director of resource protection for the state Forestry Department. "Combine this dry ground with the warm weather and the high winds . . . and you have the perfect recipe for wildfires."
Central Virginia has a chance of rain overnight tonight and again early next week, said Bill Sammler, the warning-coordination meteorologist with the Wakefield Weather Forecast Office. But "it's not looking like there are going to be any big rainmakers for us."
More than 30 firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service worked on the still burning 1,200-acre Quarry fire in Bedford County's steep terrain yesterday.
"We're having some smoke come up," said the service's Ted Coffman. "Parts of it are burning inside the [fire] lines."
Still, said Coffman, spokesman in Roanoke for the 1.8-million-acre George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, "We're lucky."
Chesapeake Fire Marshal W.K. Hibner Jr. announced a ban yesterday on all open burning in that city until further notice.
Chesapeake firefighters have extinguished two dozen brush fires so far this month, compared to three in the first half of March 2005. Fire officials said most of the fires have been caused by cigarettes or yard-debris burns that got out of control.
In Richmond County, the Department of Forestry used three bulldozers and help from local volunteer fire companies to contain a woodland fire.
"Because more than 90 percent of all wildfires are caused by humans," the Forestry Department's Miller said, "we're asking everyone to check the weather and think before burning anything."
Virginia has a 4 p.m. burn restriction in place from Feb. 15 to April 30. The law prohibits open-air fires before 4 p.m. and after midnight.
"People are still going out there to burn," Campbell said, "but just because you legally can do it, doesn't mean you should."
Deep low pressure over southeast Canada combined with high pressure across the mid-Atlantic states produced the strong dry winds yesterday, the National Weather Service explained, but the winds will subside today.
Richmond has received only traces of rain so far this month, and just 4.36 inches of rain since Jan. 1, putting the capital 4.15 inches below normal for the period, the Wakefield Weather Forecast Office said.
Contact staff writer Peter Bacqué at pbacque@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6813.
Times-Dispatch staff writers Bill Geroux, Lawrence Latané III, Andrew Petkofsky, Jamie C. Ruff and Carlos Santos contributed to this report.
