Fire grows 200 acres; fighting cost passes $2 million

The Virginian-Pilot

The North Carolina wildfire was fairly static Thursday, growing by 200 acres, but the cost of fighting it exceeded $2 million, said Dean McAlister, a spokesman at the incident command center.

A prescribed burn planned for Thursday was canceled because of smoky conditions that grounded aircraft in the morning.

Firefighters hope to start the burn s this morning. They would bring the fire's edge to N.C. 94 and could expand the fire by half its current size of about 40,000 acres.

The burn operation, likely to take two days, would move the fire's edge under safer conditions than if it moved on its own.

"The fire is creeping there now," McAlister said.

Thursday winds pushed the fire toward the south and east but didn't cause the 62-square-mile blaze to jump two control lines as had been feared, McAlister said on the phone Thursday evening.

The fire, started on June 1 by a lightning strike, has consumed tens of thousands of acres in Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

Smoke from the fire led the state Division of Air Quality to issue a Code Red notice that covers the Triangle area of Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Durham, as well as the Rocky Mount area, and runs through today. It means air quality was forecast to be generally unhealthy.

This report contains information from The Associated Press.