Personnel had difficulty getting to the scene.
Knoxville, Md (KM). There were no injuries to fire fighters who battled a mountain fire Wednesday afternoon near Knoxville.
The call went out around 4:15 PM for a large brush fire near South Mountain Road at Mountain Lane. But the fire itself was located on Weaverton Cliffs near the Appalachian Trail in Frederick County, according to Kevin Fox, Deputy Fire Chief and Chief of Volunteer Fire and Rescue Services for the county “Crews initially used ATV’s to get to a close area of the fire. But they had to walk in to make access to it. It was a total of two acres involved,” he said.
“It was an extremely rocky terrain that was tough for those all terrain vehicles to make up to. Even the walk was pretty treacherous and pretty hard for the fire fighters as they were trying to access,” says Fox. But a crew of 12 to 20 fire fighters made to the scene.
They were able to contain the fire using techniques that are employed in fighting wild land fires. “It was fought by removing the fuel from the fire,” he says. “They’ll actually worked with leaf blowers and rakes to remove any type of fuel or downed leaves and such just to stop that burning process,” says Fox.
He says fire fighters were remained at the scene for four hours.
The fire continued to smolder all night, and the Department of Natural Resources kept watch over the area overnight to make sure the fire didn’t flare up.
Fox says sometimes a lot of brush fires occur in the springtime. “We normally have a spike in wild land or mountain type fires until we get leaves on the trees,” he says. “And that’s due to the sun drying out the natural vegetation that’s down and it’s not blossoming and not retaining any moisture.”
By Kevin McManus