On a warm, dry day last week, prescribed burn coordinator Zachary O’Donnell ignited his drip torch and passed it to the landowner. They stood on the edge of a forest, somewhere between Marion and Old Fort, North Carolina. The woods sloped downward, and prickly hollies hugged the feet of naked oaks.
The landowner, who wished to remain anonymous, dripped a flaming mixture of gas and diesel fuel, dousing the dead oak leaves.
“It’s actually a little more subdued than I thought it would be, but that’s good,” O’Donnell said. “It’s creeping slowly downhill which is what we want.”
O’Donnell coordinates burns for the Southern Blue Ridge Prescribed Burn Association, or PBA. A good fire, he said, burns slowly downhill, consuming the duff layer without scorching the soil underneath.
O’Donnell gave the volunteers the OK. Students from local colleges grabbed drip torches, and other volunteers shouldered water packs to hose down runaway flames. He had invited several students from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa.
“I feel like we’re taught a lot that fire is this really terrible, destructive force only,” said Jo Chatkupt, one of the students. “And that can definitely be true — I’m from Oregon, so I’ve definitely experienced fires as like a huge, disruptive, destructive force.
Chatkupt said they wanted to learn to work with fire in a fire-dependent ecosystem. They grabbed a drip torch and walked down the barren fire line.
Holding the fire line
A few weeks ago, the PBA had cleared fire lines with leaf blowers and rakes. Todays goal is to keep the fire from crossing those fire lines. O’Donnell surveyed one end of the acres-wide perimeter.
“Another wildfire — especially after we put this fire through here — a wildfire would not be able to run through here,” O'Donnell said. “There would be no fuel or at least a lot less.”
The fire ambled along. When it reached a vine, it would climb until a volunteer cut it down. Hollies, mountain laurels, and other evergreens crackled and popped as the moisture evaporated on their leaves. The blaze never burned too high; volunteers stepped over the line of fire to reach the interior of the burn unit, tracing another line further down the hill with their drip torches.
O’Donnell unholstered his walkie-talkie.
“Hey, Jo. Do you have a radio? Is your radio on?” he asked.
The radio beeped. After a moment, Chatkupt’s voice crackled.
“Yeah, I’m here.” Beep.
“How are things looking over there?” Beep.
“They’re good,” They said. “They’re backing slowly down the hill.” Beep.
On the other side of the burn unit, Chatkupt walked along the perimeter with their drip torch.
“Just lighting off more of the top line so it burns downhill,” Chatkupt said.
The PBA burns downhill to keep the blaze under control. The wind blew up the hill, bringing the smoke with it. Some volunteers wore masks or bandanas wrapped around their faces.
A prescribed burn also often avoids large fuels, such as logs. One volunteer grabbed a chainsaw. He started clearing fallen trees in the middle of the burn unit.
Time is running out before the storm debris dries out
Helene damaged hundreds of thousands of acres of North Carolina forest, toppling millions of trees. The PBA can pile some of that debris along the perimeter of the burn unit. As long as those logs and branches retain some moisture, they shouldn’t burn.
Except they’re already drying out. O’Donnell drove around the perimeter, peering through the wall of white smoke. He had spoken with other burn bosses — the folks who lead a controlled burn — earlier this week.
“The big slash piles right on the fire lines are catching,” O’Donnell said. “We were hypothesizing that they wouldn’t be available yet, but they are. A lot of them on the fire lines are creating 30- to- 40-foot flame lengths right on the fire lines.”
In short, the burn bosses thought they had more time. When the dried piles catch, a controlled fire risks becoming uncontrolled. Climate change is exacerbating this phenomenon in much of the world, according to Robert Scheller, associate dean for research at North Carolina State University's College of Natural Resources.
“Fuels are drying out faster. We’re seeing longer fire seasons as well as drier fire seasons,” He said.
As our climate warms, North Carolina is drying out quicker between storms, and the rain we receive is coming during large storm events, like Helene. However, burning fossil fuels and warming the planet aren’t the only ways humans exacerbate fire season.
“When you have a state that is growing at such a rapid pace as North Carolina is,” Jackson said. “You have more people, you have more people recreating, you’re going to have more human-caused wildfires.”
North Carolina has more homes bordered by forest than any other state, and ranked fourth in the country for wildfires in 2022.
“Most people, when they think of natural disasters in North Carolina, they’re thinking tropical weather, they’re thinking the stray winter storm that we’ve experienced recently,” Jackson said. “But they don’t think of the wildfires.”
After Helene and the recent spate of wildfires, that might be changing. During O’Donnell’s burn, the relative humidity continued to creep down throughout the day. The group had prepped 16 acres and burned a little over 10 before it was time to pack up.
“Post Helene, there’s been more landowners reaching out and wanting to do something to mitigate some of that heavy blowdown,” O’Donnell said. “It’s so hard to burn that big stuff but, when possible, burning around it or trying to put a little fire through it is great.”
