On Friday, November 4th, my dad and I drove down Highway 64 near Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina Ten miles from our cabin, we passed a sign to caution drivers that they were approaching an area filled with heavy smoke. A week before, we got a notice that there was an active forest fire in the vicinity of the cabin my family had built from the ground up. While some people were worrying about who would be elected on Tuesday, we were trying to calculate the odds that our cabin would burn down in the next week. Which, by the way, we eventually decided was unlikely. Still, forest fires aren’t something you see every day. There were a dozen cars stopped on the side of the road the closer we got. People were just staring at the smoke and watching the low-burning fires slowly advance up the mountains.
View of the smoke from my front porch
We drove up a steep gravel road where we thought the fire might be coming from. One fireman told us that the rest of the mountain was closed off; they were mostly concerned with protecting a nearby house. There were several firefighters in yellow uniforms who trudged up the gravel after him to help build a fireline. We were close enough to see the fire; it wasn’t severe, but we heard helicopters flying overhead that night. Our neighbor told us that they’d been dumping loads of water gathered from Lake Chatuge on the fires all week.
According to the latest report from the North Carolina Forestry Service on November 5th, around 900 acres of the Nantahala Forest were burning. Although that sounds extreme, these wildfires burn relatively slowly when travelling downhill. In just one night, the fire near our cabin probably only burned about a half-mile to a mile closer to us. Dad and I decided we would take some of our valuables just in case. He’s been a fireman since he was seventeen and he wasn’t worried, so I didn’t see any reason to be.
SATURDAY, NOV 5: The fires had advanced overnight and were climbing up the ridge approximately a mile from our cabin.
We talked to a woman in town who said she’d just bought a house there in June. After all the work she’d put into renovating, she refused to evacuate if the fire got worse.There’s no end in sight and no rain forecast, so it’s up to firefighters to slow the progression. With luck, there won’t be any strong winds that could lead to the fire spreading faster or reaching the tree canopies.
For more information about forest fires in North Carolina or to stay up to date with these alerts, go to http://www.fs.usda.gov/alerts/nfsnc/alerts-notices.