Wildfires eat up record 25,153 acres in Virginia

So far in 2008, wildfires in Virginia have eaten up 25,153 acres, breaking a record set in 1963, according to a report from the Virginia Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry.

But local fire officials aren’t overly concerned even as fall wildfire season moves in on the heels of a rain-starved summer.

“It doesn’t appear to be very bad right now,” said Monelison Volunteer Fire Department Chief Rick Hunter.

One mitigating factor, he said, is the fact that leaves are still on the trees.

“Once the leaves get to falling, that hurts us in two ways,” Hunter said. “Number one, people want to burn them, and number two, it allows more sunlight to the forest floor and it dries that out.”According to the report, the total acreage burned so far totals more than three times the amount of land burned in 2007.

Of the more than 25,000 Virginia acres lost so far this year, 16,000 acres burned in one day, according to the report. About 200 fires sparked on Feb. 10 and were aided by a severe windstorm. The largest was a 1,500-plus-acre conflagration in the Montvale area of Bedford County.

The 200 fires, Virginia Department of Forestry Officials said, demolished the previous record of 88 fires in a day.

Derek Keiser, with the Virginia Department of Forestry, said conditions are nowhere near as fire-friendly as they were that day.

“You look outside, the grass and all is still green,” he said. “Those things kind of make us comfortable.”

Hunter recalled a blaze last November on Tobacco Row Mountain near Monroe that destroyed a few hundred acres.

“We’re nowhere near that. Last November was terribly dry,” he said. “We haven’t had much rain, (but) we haven’t had a lot of wind or, you know, high temperatures, low humidity.”

Keiser said even though indicators now are not particularly fire-friendly, people need to be mindful of the fact that weather is always unpredictable.

“You never know what the forecast is going to be in November,” he said, adding “we never let our guard down.”

He added that, in the event of a fire, conditions are still less than desirable for suppression efforts.

“Fires tend to burn a little bit hotter and a little bit faster than they would in a typical year, because it’s so dry,” he said.

Overall, he said the area is “in pretty good shape” compared to last year but carelessness or inattentiveness can still do a whole lot of damage.

“The old Smoky Bear thing is, you know, to try and prevent the forest fires before they happen,” Keiser said.