Forest fires in Ohiopyle State Park were fueled by winds, officials say
Pennsylvania forestry officials said strong winds whipping through Ohiopyle State Park fueled a relatively small fire into two blazes that burned roughly 200 wooded acres.
Emergency responders from the state as well as throughout Fayette County, many of them volunteers, spent more than 10 hours battling the forest fires, sparked Thursday night at opposite ends of the 20,500-acre park. One near Dunbar Ohiopyle Road in Dunbar Township was on state gamelands and private property. The other, much larger fire covering about 200 acres was in the Victoria Flats area of the park near Rock Spring Road in Stewart Township, according to officials with the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
Cory Wentzel, a forest assistant manager for the state, said Friday the fires burned “really active through the night, which is kind of unusual.”
But, he noted, “the perfect conditions came: The winds ahead of the front that came through this morning, is really what drove this fire.”
Park police called in the first fire at 5:12 p.m. and multiple fire units arrived on the scene to try to contain the fires into early Friday, county emergency officials said. The last hot spots were extinguished shortly before 4:30 a.m. No one was injured.
Mr. Wentzel said the rain overnight eventually extinguished the blaze.
He praised the coordinated emergency response, calling it “a community effort.”
“It was a lot, a lot of hard work from basically volunteers who came in here and contained this fire, or else it would’ve been a lot worse — I just can’t emphasize that enough,” Mr. Wentzel said.
Mr. Wentzel said the cause of the fires has not been determined.
He explained that it’s not uncommon to see fires erupt in the Victoria Flats area.
“We’ve had railroad fires before, though we’re not sure if that’s what caused this one or not,” he said. “We have it on our radar as the Bureau of Forestry because [the area] is so inaccessible and the slopes are so steep that a fire that’s small can get big really quick and that’s what happened here.”
He said some crews would be remaining on the scene through Friday to tend to any flare-ups due to the smoldering fires.