‘The Worst I’ve Ever Seen’; Fires Sweep Through Southeastern U.S.
November 14, 20165:27 PM ET
A satellite image shows smoke from wildfires burning in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia on Nov. 7.
“No one can remember a wildfire as peculiar as the monster gnawing through the gorge above the village of Chimney Rock,” began an article Monday in the Charlotte Observer.
The blaze in question is one of dozens of partially contained wildfires, some of them suspected cases of arson, burning across the Southeast. In Alabama alone, there are currently 20 fires burning, and more than 1,500 blazes have burned there since October 1, according to the Alabama Forestry Commission.
People are being evacuated in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, including in and around Chimney Rock, N.C., where the erratic fire described in the Observer has enveloped some 3,000 acres since Saturday, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
As of Monday afternoon, that blaze was only 15 percent contained.
“This fire has the characteristics of western fires, of California fires,” Richard Barnwell, the 74-year-old fire chief for the town of Bat Cave, N.C., told the Observer. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen.”
