Myrtle Beach Fire Update
CNN is reporting that a Yard debris burn likely behind South Carolina fire, official says
(CNN) — The cause of a South Carolina wildfire that has charred about 19,600 acres appears to be a yard debris fire, the head of the state’s Forestry Commission said Friday.
The blaze seems to have been caused by a yard debris fire in the Woodlawn subdivision, an unincorporated part of Horry County, halfway between Conway and North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Forestry Commission Forest Protection Chief Darryl Jones said.
The fire began Saturday and rekindled itself Wednesday evening, according to the Forestry Commission.
Apparently the debris fire appeared to be out, but the winds blew it back to life. Another problem is that there are peat bogs along the South Carolina coast, and when they are drained and built upon, it is the same as building on a coal seam. If the peat starts burning, it can continue underground until there is enough rain to thoroughly saturate the ground.
The Myrtle Beach Sun News notes that Gusty winds expected to challenge firefighters today, as the fire is approximately 50% contained. To date there are no injuries reported from the fires.
The paper also has a Google Map showing the fire areas, road closures, and shelters.
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Fire and wind don’t mix well.
cookie jill´s last blog post..Good Buzz on Bee-ing Healthy
They have a second map, a PDF of the resort that was hit the hardest and it is obvious that many of the homes were ignited by burning embers blown ahead of the main fire.
The wind will bring “dead” fires back to life, and spread the fire randomly. As the chief said the Sun News piece – it’s about containing the wildfire, not attempting to put it out.
Here in Santa Barbara we know all too well about flying embers. The last fire, The Tea Fire, driving down the road with embers the size of bricks being blown around by hurricane force gusts was truly an experience I would rather not go through again.
cookie jill´s last blog post..Good Buzz on Bee-ing Healthy
There are a lot of waxy leaved evergreens in the forest, and when those things get hot, you have the equivalent of a petroleum fire. Add to that all of the volatiles in pine trees, and it is a nasty piece of work that isn’t easy to fight with straight water.
You could tell from the spottiness of the California fires during the Santa Anas, that the fires were being spread by embers, not just moving through the brush.
…I long ago lost count of the number of supposedly extinguished fires that turned not to be the case and which became wildland fires (OK, so there’s three I personally recall, but I don’t really want to talk about those), but the thing that attracts my attention is that this region doesn’t really have a recent history of large fires of the sort to which we out West have grown accustomed. Trooping off to jill’s neck of the woods every spring and fall to fight fires is a long-held tradition, but the idea of sending fire teams east is a relatively new gig…
Thank God Al Gore is fat; otherwise we might have to blame this relatively new wildfire threat on climate change…
There has been a lot of growth in that area recently, and you have people out in the woods [a situation that you know better than most, is a wildfire in the making]. The change in rain patterns has exasperated the situation.
We have always had pine woods fires, but they were watched more than fought, because they usually occurred on private land, and there weren’t many people to be threatened.
We have fire watchtowers on the Eglin Reservation, but most of the heavily wooded areas on the Panhandle belong to the St. Joe Paper Co. and they didn’t get nervous about it. You need fires all along to clean out the woods, and the trees were used for pulp after the market for turpentine went away.
Lately the military has been doing controlled burns after every rain storm, trying to clear out all of the debris left by local hurricanes. We had three at the beginning of the week.
With peat, waxy-leafed brush, and pine trees, when one gets started, it really races. There are a lot of streams and rivers in the area, which once fed the bogs, but their levels are way down.
We have another swamp burning in South Florida that has Alligator Alley, the main East-West road in South Florida, closed because of the smoke.
Yep, without all of than extra weight that Al is carrying, some people might get concerned about bogs and swamps burning.