At least 20 wildfires in North Carolina are being investigated as suspected arson, officials said, as firefighters from across the country focused a pocket of fires in the bone-dry southern Appalachian mountains.
A division of the U.S. Forest Service said fires have been burning on more than 25 square miles in the Nantahala National Forest in the western part of North Carolina. Across the South, relentless drought has turned pine trees into matchsticks and forced people from their homes in dozens of communities.
More than 5,000 firefighters and support staff from around the nation are trying to suppress these fires, said Shardul Raval, director of fire and aviation management for the southern region of the U.S. Forest Service.
The effort includes about 40 aircraft, including three large air tankers flying out of Chattanooga, Tenn. Tens of thousands of acres of forest have burned and about a dozen of the largest fires were uncontained, the forest service said.
High winds and temperatures and weeks without rain have combined to spark blaze after blaze in the unusually dry landscape. Numerous teams reported wind-driven fires racing up slopes and down ravines as they struggled to protect hundreds of threatened structures.
“It just smells like a campfire” along the Appalachian Trail in north Georgia, said Carlie Gentry, who works at the Mountain Crossings store at Walasi-yi, a popular stop for hikers.
“For weeks up here we’ve been having smoke, but it is getting more intense for sure,” Gentry said. Typically, the view stretches for miles, she said. Now, “you can hardly see to the next ridge.”
The national drought report shows 41.6 million people in parts of 15 Southern states living in drought conditions. The worst is in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, but extreme drought also is spreading into the western Carolinas. Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina all have fierce fires.
“Right now we’re kind of holding our own,” said Jennifer Turner, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky’s state Division of Forestry. “We’ve been able to get control over some of the smaller fires.”
But with humidity so low in the normally lush Appalachians and Great Smoky Mountains, authorities are bracing for more. North Carolina’s Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency for a fourth of his state’s 100 counties, to help with evacuations and provide more firefighting assets.