A 4,246 acre wildfire (or 6.5 square miles) in Carroll County has been 90% contained, according to the Mississippi Forestry Commission. In a social media post, the commission called it the second largest wildfire in state history.
The commission said MFC crews are in the “mop-up” phase, patrolling the perimeter of the blaze to “extinguish hotspots and ensure the 4,242 acres burned do not see any new flare-ups.”
Shamira Muhammad
Carroll County wildfire 90% contained, according to MS Forestry Commission
The fire, which began Friday afternoon, came after the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning because of drought conditions and an increased amount of dry timber that heightened the risk of wildfires across the state. Several counties also issued burn bans.
In Black Hawk, a tiny town with about a two mile radius in Carroll County, residents went about daily life as the smell of smoke began to lift around a local Dollar General. Over the weekend, smoke had been visible from the hill behind the store. The Cajun Navy, the American Red Cross and Pinelake Church of Madison had set up relief aid over the weekend for firefighters battling the blaze just across the street from the store. But by Monday, no smoke was visible and the agencies had not set up relief efforts because the fire had been 70% contained at that point.
Local resident Diane Boggs said she still remembered the fear she felt at her home when she saw smoke beginning to appear in the near distance.
“It was so thick,” she said. “We've got a pond down below our house and we could not even see the pond. It was like fog but it was just a thick smoke that took mid-morning before it finally all dissipated.”
Boggs said she felt a sense of relief when she realized winds had changed direction.
“It's been kind of scary when you think about what could happen,” she said.
The county's fire coordinator Jake Hurst told Desoto County News that 10 homes on county roads had to be evacuated because of the fire. The roads included County Road 218, 163 and 360, which are gravel and one-way. Boggs lives on a paved road but said she immediately began to prepare for the worst.
“We've seen these fires in California, and other places where they had to get out so fast, and it makes you stop and think, what would I have time to get?,” she said. “I've even thought about getting things together, like all our medicines that we take, and different clothes, and some good stable shoes, and just things like that, that you know you would need if you had to get out quickly.”
Henry Melton lives about seven miles or so down the road from the Black Hawk Dollar General.
“In our area, I'm not as concerned because there's a lot of hills and water sources between us and Black Hawk,” he said. “We have two nice creeks, one that we live on Bophumpa, and then there's Funny Gusher that's right up the road from me.”
“I knew we were under a red flag warning because it's been extremely dry since the winter storm hit,” he said. “I was thinking about people in this area, in Black Hawk, because they've been devastated over the last couple of years.”
Melton said two tornadoes in the past few years and January’s ice storm created an environment of broken trees and limbs, and downed power lines.
“This is a rural area. So a lot of our older roads are still dirt roads,” he said. “They're really one car passable. If you know how to navigate it, which we do in this area, we just kind of park in a wide open space so that someone can pass by if we see them.”
He said the storms have made getting through some roads more difficult. “You gotta back up to let somebody else by,” he said. “Being that a lot of these roads are still dealing with debris from the winter storm, that's going to make things even more difficult.”
Lifetime Black Hawk resident John Woodson said he noticed a helicopter taking water from a lake behind his home over the weekend.
“I was trying to figure out what was going on till different ones were calling me and telling me we got a fire,” he said.
Woodson said he had hoped the fire could clear timber thatl lines the area’s roads and are still piled up in nearby wooded areas.
“We kinda hoped to let it burn for a little while, so we can get some of that timber out of the way, and make the land better,” he said. “Back in the day when we were all growing up, the families used to do that. When one family member start a fire, we let it burn, so we just basically clear the land off of it. The best way and the cheapest way.”
No injuries or damage have been reported from the Carroll County fire. Two additional fires on the gulf coast have been completely contained.