Fury and Fire
Winds and downed power lines fuel rash of fast-moving wildfires
As if Rappahannock County volunteer fire and rescue crews didn’t have enough on their hands during the height of this past week’s freakish windstorm, the first responders found themselves racing from one windswept wildfire to another.
And as bad as the dozen or so brush fires were here, Madison County firefighters in the space of 24 hours responded to no less than 30 wildfires.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” longtime Madison firefighter Steve Hoffman told the Rappahannock News. “I’ve spent 58 years with this fire department and it’s the busiest day we’ve had that I can remember.
“It started around 4 a.m. Friday morning and went on until about 8 or so that night,” he said. “And at the same time Green County was calling for mutual aid, Orange was calling for mutual aid, Culpeper was calling for mutual aid, and Rappahannock was calling for mutual aid.”
Here in Rappahannock County, fortunately, no major property damage or serious injuries resulted from the numerous blazes, albeit at all times firefighters took caution not to get caught in the path of the fastmoving flames.
The largest of the Rappahannock wildfires, between Yancy and Hawlin roads in Woodville, broke out around noon Friday and scorched approximately 200 acres of hillsides and hollows belonging to Eldon Farms.
Woodville resident Sharon Pierce, who first alerted authorities to the rapidly spreading brushfire, stood by as fire-fighting units from across the county, as well as mutual aid responders from Culpeper and the Virginia Department of Forestry battled the stubborn flames.
A toppled tree that blocked Yancy Road prevented emergency vehicles from reaching the southernmost point of the fire, but fortunately the sustained winds blew the flames north in the direction of the hoses.
“We’ve got numerous fires popping up as we speak,” one Castleton firefighter remarked as he rolled up a hose and rushed from blackened pastureland in Scrabble to Eldon Farms. He equated the wind-fanned flames to what California firefighters face when battling strong Santa Ana winds.
The estimated dozen or so wildfires, most of which erupted during the daylight hours of Friday, burned brush from Round Hill to Scrabble Road to Harris Hollow, the latter fire breaking out on Sunday afternoon off Sunnyside Road.
What caused so many fires in such a short amount of time was the combination of strong winds and downed or arcing power lines, which can spark flames almost instantaneously, especially with the dry conditions Rappahannock County is experiencing.
“Primarily all the trees came down on wires,” Sperryville Volunteer Fire Department President Larry Grove told the News. “At one point during the storm every piece of fire equipment in the county was being used.”
At the Sperryville firehouse, he said, volunteers worked non-stop from 11 o’clock Thursday night through the weekend, responding not only to the fires but other storm related damage.
“A lot of people doing a lot of work,” Grove summed it up, comparing this past week’s storm to the June 2012 “derecho” wall of wind and lightning that struck Rappahannock County and the rest of the Mid-Atlantic with deadly force.
“This storm was more sustained — over a longer period of time,” he said of this past week’s Nor’easter.
Like Grove, Rappahannock County emergency management specialist Art Candenquist confirmed that “every fire and rescue company in Rappahannock County had been dispatched to numerous brush and field fires started by arcing downed power lines, often in areas difficult to reach by firefighters due to topography and terrain.
“Wind-driven flames consumed vast areas of open and wooded land,” Candenquist told the News. “In some cases structures may have been affected, but the timely response by firefighters prevented any structural damages from fire. County fire and rescue companies were often dispatched to more than one location at the same time, and their efforts were augmented by the Virginia Department of Forestry from the Warrenton area headquarters.”
As pointed out previously, he said in some cases first responders “found their access roads blocked by downed trees and wires, and had to use alternative routes to reach the scene of the fires.”
Kenny Mills of the Culpeper County Volunteer Fire Department told this newspaper that he and his fellow firefighters to the south began receiving emergency calls around 4 a.m. Friday, and they didn’t let up until that evening.
“We probably had anywhere from eight to ten [brush] fires,” Mills said. “We kind of stayed in the middle here, kept busy in town and running around the outskirts.”
“We’ve got numerous fires popping up as we speak,” one Castleton firefighter remarked as he rolled up a hose and rushed from blackened pastureland in Scrabble to Eldon Farms. He equated the windfanned flames to what California firefighters face when battling strong Santa Ana winds.