Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 11, 1995 TAG: 9504110125
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FRANCISCO LENGTH: Long
Sue Riggs spent most of Monday squinting through her binoculars, trying to get a close-up view of the forest fire that was crackling its way through the tinderbox woods toward her Craig County home.
The pillars of white smoke billowing from the side of Cove Mountain looked so huge they could have been mistaken for low-hanging clouds, but the flames that fed them were so tiny Riggs could barely make out a flicker of orange, even with her spyglasses.
"It's not real bad," she said. "If you were up there, you could stomp on it, but you can't get up there. And if you could, you'd need a million people stomping on it."
That pretty well summed up the frustration folks in Craig County felt Monday, as three out-of-control forest fires raged for a third day - if only they could all just hike up into the mountains and stomp the things out before it got to them, they'd be OK.
But the mountainous terrain they love made firefighting a tricky proposition - two crews of Arizona firefighters had to hike a couple extra miles before reaching their designated firefighting spot because their bus couldn't cross a back-country bridge.
Instead, the home folks could do little but sit and wait for the flames to get close enough to fight - even if that meant sitting up all night, as many residents have been doing since the blazes broke out Saturday.
"I got up every two hours [Sunday night] till I could see the flames," Riggs said. "Then I was up every hour." The flames scorching the ridgetops were a pretty sight - "like a string of Christmas lights" - but their beauty made them no less dangerous.
Come Monday, Riggs still wasn't taking any chances. She didn't go into work - she's a mental health counselor in Roanoke - so she could stay home to keep an eye on the fire. She wasn't alone.
"I think everybody is staying home from work today," said truck driver Jackie Sarver, who joined Riggs at a wide spot on Virginia 621 which became a favorite pullover for fire watchers. Some didn't have a choice about whether they went to work; for a time Monday, Virginia 311 was closed in two places where the fire had leaped the county's main highway. Schools were closed because buses couldn't get through.
Others were mindful of the close call they'd had Sunday night, when high winds whipped the flames close enough to threaten homes along the base of Cove Mountain.
Things looked bad enough for Reva Alley's trailer then that her son, Ellwood, rented a U-Haul to carry away her belongings. He also called his church, the First Church of God on Hildebrand Road in Northwest Roanoke, looking for volunteers to help him load. Next thing he knew, he had more help than he could handle. "I couldn't believe it when they were all driving in; we probably had 40 people here," he said.
As things turned out, the winds died down, Forest Service firefighters showed up to construct a "back fire" - an intentionally set fire designed to burn off potential fuel - around her trailer and nobody had to evacuate.
Alley's experience - both the good and the bad - was a common one in Craig County.
Just down the road, Mel Shrewsbury returned home on Sunday afternoon from a weekend in West Virginia to find smoke spewing from the woods around his spanking-new home.
He also found his new neighbors wetting down his house with a garden hose.
Later, a fire truck came by and offered to spray it down even more.
"It was wild here last night," Shrewsbury said. "That whole knob was one big ol' orange glow. When the fire got into those pines, it was a pretty big candle burning. We were watching the mountain burn down and [had] nothing but a garden hose to fight it with. It felt like fighting a bear with a switch."
But then that section of the blaze hit a small stream - and stopped. Burned itself out.
Come Monday, Shrewsbury still had his garden hose flung over his roof, just in case the fire came back.
Sheriff B.B. McPherson said he wasn't surprised by the way neighbors were looking out for neighbors - even ones they didn't know. "It's always that way in Craig County. When there's a problem, the community pulls together."
Just ask the firefighters up on Potts Mountain. "They're feeding us well," said B.W. Ruble of the New Castle Volunteer Fire Department. "All the local churches are fixing food. And people are calling in saying, `Is there anything we can do?'''
Sure is. Bring more food and drink.
"Saturday night," added his partner, George Romary, "somebody brought 10 to 15 cases of soda in."
At the Bread Basket restaurant in New Castle, owner Arnold Harry was working overtime Monday trying to feed all the firefighters. He'd called in extra help to set up an assembly line of sandwich makers in his banquet room, provided he could find enough food. "I cleaned out everything the boy had at the Mick-or-Mack," Harry said.
And he'd already made two emergency runs to Roanoke for more food - including one trip where he had to take the long way around, over Caldwell Mountain and down into Fincastle, because the main road was closed. That kept Harry up until nearly midnight Sunday, but then his kitchen crew was in at 3:30 a.m. to start baking biscuits.
If the community's reaction to the fires is predictable, though, the fires themselves are not - and that was a constant source of conversation Monday.
"I've just never seen a forest fire burn like this one," said Lester Cole, who came out from Roanoke to check on his hunting cabin at Francisco. "It's so spotty. Most times forest fires make a clean sweep through and get everything."
But this one seemed to have mind of its own, meandering here and there through the hollows, showing up where least expected.
That's what had Riggs and Sarver so worried. They were counting on the Cove Mountain fire to burn down toward Craig Creek, then stop.
"But if it hits this broomsage," Sarver said, motioning toward the weedy pasture in front of him, "it's history."
"And then if it gets into those pine trees," Riggs said, nodding toward the woods behind her, "it could go all the way up to Sinking Creek."
by CNB