Trench Dug to Fight Huge Wildfire in North Carolina

Hundreds of firefighters dug a “monster trench” Monday to stop a 10-mile-wide blaze that has consumed about 90,000 acres of North Carolina woodlands and destroyed at least 27 homes.

The wildfire forced hundreds of persons to flee its path before gusting winds shifted and helped turn the blaze back on itself Monday.

Some 400 firefighters with bulldozers and shovels stopped the fire’s march up the coast by digging trenches and pumping water from nearby lakes into the ditches. Four helicopters dumping buckets of water battled the fire in places where it threatened to break free.

An irrigation system near New Lake was used to spray a “curtain of water” in case the fire spread, said Obie Willingham, a U.S. Forest Service records officer. He said that irrigation ditches on farms could be flooded to snuff out other fires if necessary,

‘Not Under Control’

“The fire is contained but it’s not under control,” said Chrystal Stowe, a spokeswoman for North Carolina’s emergency management division. “We’re pumping water into these monster trenches and keeping it from spreading. We expect the fire to take several weeks to burn itself out.

“It’s a united front of fire spread across three counties. The ground everywhere is literally on fire. You can see smoke rising out of the soil.”

Officials said firefighters would have to keep watch over the blaze for as long as two months because of flammable peat bogs along the coast.

Firefighters saved Gum Neck, a town of about 100 families, by setting up a fire line at Alligator River on Sunday. But 15 miles west, the wildfire raged through a resort community at Lake Phelps, destroying 11 houses, 15 mobile homes and a business, officials said.

‘Fire Just Raced’

“The fire just raced through there. . . . We just had enough time to get the people out,” said Johnny Barnes, a Washington County deputy sheriff.

Wildfires have burned more than 500,000 acres of forest in the Southeast this spring.