COLUMBIA (AP) ó Firefighters battling a wildfire in eastern North Carolina that has spread smoke as far as Raleigh brought more of the blaze under control on Monday.
Officials said the fire in and around the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is now about 60 percent contained. Thatís up from the 40 percent of the past several days, but officials caution it could burn for weeks without heavy rains.
Firefighting crews on Monday were pumping 6 million gallons of water an hour from two lakes to saturate land where the fire is smoldering in peat soils. The pumping is ěthe equivalent of moving up the hurricane season,î said Dean McAlister, a spokesman at the fire incident command center.
Firefighters will pump water from Lake Phelps and New Lake to saturate land closest to communities. Most of that water comes from Lake Phelps, where firefighters have permission to drain up to 5 inches, he said.
ěWe can only do this in limited areas so weíre focusing on areas where thereís the biggest threat to residents,î McAlister said.
The heavy smoke led the state Division of Air Quality to issue a Code Purple alert Monday for the fourth consecutive day. The alert is the most serious ever issued by North Carolina authorities and means the air is very unhealthy, said spokesman Tom Mather.
The fire began June 1 with a lightning strike on private land. It has burned more than 41,000 acres, or about 64 square miles, in and around the refuge.
Higher humidity and lower temperatures helped firefighters battle the blaze during the weekend, but higher temperatures and winds were forecast for Monday. Thunderstorms are forecast for Tuesday, and any rain would aid firefighters.
One big concern for firefightersí safety is that the fire has burned soil away from tree roots, McAlister said.
ěAny gusty winds would push a lot of those trees over,î he said. ěThat will present hazards to firefighters working the lines today.î
As of Monday, 514 people were involved in the firefighting effort, down from a high of 570 last week. It has cost more than $3.8 million so far to fight the fire.
In southeastern Virginia, a fire in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge grew Monday to 2,400 acres. A crew of 260 people were working to halt the fireís spread with a controlled burn along a 3-mile stretch of old road, and three helicopters were also dumping water on the fire.
The fire has wiped out parts of a project to restore Atlantic white cedar trees in the refuge, which covers 110,000 acres in Virginia and North Carolina.