Burning on the South Mountain Game Lands

A few weeks ago we went down to Rutherford County and assisted, along with other crews from the region, the Morganton crew with a prescribed burn on the South Montain game lands.
Chip, the Morganton crew leader, stands watch while the fire slowly backs thru this cutover section.

And here, Mark, the crew leader of the Waynesville crew, takes care of some fire that is creeping into the firelane.

Later on, Mark got a torch and was lighting the fire. When he got to this spot we had to watch carefully as it began throwing alot of heat and smoke over the firelane.


Meanwhile, the guys watching the other side of the fire on the upper firelane had their hands full with multiple spotovers. Two dozers were running constantly trying to get other firelanes installed to stop the fire that had gotten "out". Luckily they were able to do so and the spotovers were contained.

From where we were it was easy to see why they were having problems on top. Tis fire was burning hot and it was putting up an amazing amount of smoke, so much so that I couldn't get it all in one picture!

It didn't take long and we hit a spot on our firelane where the wind began throwing embers below the line and we started getting spotovers of our own. You can see the road which served as the firelane at the top of the picture. The burn was above the firelane and as you can obviously see, it got below it. We were able to get it out fairly quickly.

Even with the few spotovers, it was a very successful burn!