Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 6, 1995 TAG: 9504060079
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORWOOD LENGTH: Medium
``We could see the fire coming right across here,'' Martin, an 84-year-old retired railroad worker, said Wednesday as he surveyed charred land near his home, part of the 1,200 acres blackened by wildfires in Nelson County since Tuesday.
On Tuesday afternoon firefighters told Martin and his wife, Ruth, 76, to leave the house Martin's father bought in 1939. They spent the night with their daughter and found their house still standing the next morning.
Several fires burned Wednesday in central and Western Virginia, scorching more than 1,600 acres, including a loblolly pine plantation along the James River. Only one house, an unoccupied vacation home in Page County, had been destroyed.
The Martins were lucky. Their house sat in the middle of a circle of green lawn amid burned woods and fields. Firefighters ``said these ditches they cut out here were the only thing that saved it,'' Ruth Martin said. ``These woods and fields can grow back, but my house won't grow back.''
Virginia officials expect a busy and dangerous forest fire season. Dead limbs and trees culled by 1994 ice storms and a lack of rain has turned forest floors into tinder boxes.
This week's fires were fanned by winds that reached 40 mph.
Firefighters from the Virginia Department of Forestry and scores of local fire companies across the region finally began bringing the fires under control after temperatures plunged early Wednesday and winds abated.
``Tuesday was a God-awful day - the wind was blowing all day, and it blew until about 2 this morning,'' said Frank Wood, the state forester for Nelson County.
Firefighting was fiercest at Old Norwood Plantation, an antebellum spread of 1,700 acres along the James River in Nelson County that was badly damaged by the fire.
John and Inge-Marie Heilman, owners of the pine farm, said 300 acres of young loblolly pines were destroyed and another 500 acres of older trees were badly damaged, if not killed. Heilman said he is not optimistic that he will see the timber land completely reforested.
``When you're 64, or about to be 64, you don't have ... a lot [left] on the clock,'' Heilman said. ``But we decided we love this sort of thing so we will get back to work. Onward and upward!''
Heilman said he could not estimate the damage to his land until he had spoken with experts from a private tree production company.
Since the beginning of the year, fires have burned 4,600 acres in Virginia, compared with just less than 2,000 acres in the same period last year.
Memo: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.