News

Emergency chief updates commissioners on wildfire

By Bill Moss, Published: November 6, 2023

Henderson County commissioners adjusted their agenda at a regularly scheduled meeting Monday night to hear an update from County Manager John Mitchell and Emergency Services Director Jimmy Brissie on the Poplar Drive fire covering 450 acres and threatening homes.

Here are the highlights from Brissie:

Every Henderson County fire department has been engaged in the effort. "The North Carolina Forest Service has been on the ground with our team since day one as well. As an event begins to escalate we bring in additional resources.” Backup started with nearby counties and now has spread to firefighters as far east as the Coastal Plain. The North Carolina Forest Service has brought in additional resources from across the state. Also on the ground are the North Carolina emergency management office and the state fire marshal’s office.

Forest rangers focus on constructing fire lines, which "allow our firefighters to focus on protecting structures. Our goal was to protect as many structures as we can to limit those losses … On the county side, we have 65 agencies involved to manage this incident today and over 70 people. You couple that with the Forest Service and you've easily got over 200 people working to manage this fire."

Community support: "Yesterday a request for donations went out for some specific donations and within literally an hour there was more stuff than could be managed.” Brissie thanked Fruitland Baptist Church, the Fruitland Bible Institute and the North Carolina Baptist Men for setting up a feeding operation and providing other support.

Duration: "This is not going to be a two-day operation. If the fire went out today, they're gonna have a (Forest Service) presence for probably three weeks doing what they call mop-up operations, making sure all the hotspots are out. There's still a lot of leaves on the trees and leaves are fuel. So they will have a strong presence for several weeks, even once they declare the fire 100 percent contained.”

The fire is 5 percent contained. “Just because the number isn't changing much doesn't mean they're losing ground. It just means that there's still a lot of area between their control lines and where that active fire is.”

No injuries, no one left homeless. “We've had no need for anyone needing an emergency shelter.” The two residential structures that burned down were vacation cabins. “So we've been fortunate to not have any particular human service needs.”

After Brissie's update, board Chair Rebecca McCall reported that Gov. Roy Cooper had called earlier Monday and asked if the state could help.

“And I said, ‘Well, when we start tallying up the cost of this, we'll be getting back in touch because I'm sure the cost will be high.’ That's why there is a state of emergency so that we can seek those funds for reimbursement to help the fire departments recover their costs,” she said.

When Commissioner Michael Edney asked whether the county needed to provide more resources, Brissie responded, “At this point, we have everything we need. All these resources we've got coming in from out of our community — we've been able to find places to house them. We're checking off those basic needs for them.”

McCall admonished people to avoid all burning: “We do have a burning ban but I'm just going to request, please do not even think about burning anything in your yard. Sometimes we do things without thinking about it but we see where this can lead and we don't want another Party Rock fire on our hands and hopefully the wind won't pick up later."