Bald Mountain Fire grows to about 2,000 acres

BOTETOURT COUNTY, Va. (WDBJ) - Fire and EMS crews have been busy fighting brush fires in Botetourt County near the Craig County line since Wednesday morning.

People could smell and see the smoke for miles across the county Thursday, from two wildfires deep in the National Forest west of the Oriskany community off Route 615.

The larger of those two fires is the Bald Mountain Fire, which has spread to about 2,000 acres as of Friday morning, according to Botetourt County.

“There’s no immediate threat or danger to anyone in the vicinity because of the rural nature of it. So we don’t see that being a problem, and we would just ask for people’s patience and understanding as we work through it,” said Botetourt County Fire-EMS Chief Jason Ferguson.

Botetourt County crews first got the call to respond to the fires Wednesday morning. They used drones to locate the fires in the middle of the forest and contacted the U.S. Forestry Service.

While the Forest Service has been strained due to the government shutdown, it has quickly worked with the Virginia Department of Forestry and local partners to contain the fire.

“The Forest Service has been getting the appropriate resources over the past 24 hours, and there are going to be some visible aircraft in the area doing some water drops from up high to take care of the areas that may not be contained yet,” said Ferguson.

The USFS said as of Thursday afternoon, it had assigned resources to the fire that include 4 crews, 8 engines, 3 helicopters, and 2 super scooper airtankers.

Botetourt County Fire-EMS provided its instant command trailer and emergency manager to help the USFS with mapping resources and local connections. It also provided EMS support, a brush truck, and a tanker truck.

The second fire, called the Lignite Fire, started about two and a half miles away and is much smaller, about 150 acres. Neither fire has been fully contained, but Botetourt crews are helping support the Forest Service along the containment lines.

“This very much looks like what a prescribed burn would be, where they preplan a large acreage burn to try to renew the forest floor, but in this case, it just didn’t happen that way. So the management of it is to try to contain it and let it burn itself from the inside out to those lines,” said Ferguson.

Fortunately, there are no homes in the area, but there is one cabin that was protected by firefighters. The USFS said Forest Service Road 180 Lignite Mine Road from Route 615 to Route 617 in Botetourt County, as well as Forest Service Road 179 Bald Mountain Road, and Forest Service Road 181 in Craig County, are temporarily closed due to the fires.

Ferguson said he expects the fires will continue to burn through the weekend before they are fully contained and extinguished. With the windy conditions and leaves on the ground, he also urged county residents to be extremely cautious with any burns.

“Even though there is no burn ban in place, it is fall fire season. We ask folks to be very cognizant because there is a lot of new leaf litter on the ground, the relative humidity is low, and the conditions are just right for a small fire to take off very quickly,” said Ferguson.

The USFS said the cause of the fire has not yet been determined.