Dozens of other fires exploded in Georgia and western North Carolina, who were both difficult by Hurricane Helene. In some regions, the fallen trees can act as fuel and promote a spread briefly and long -term fire, according to Virginia Iglesias, which studies the effects of climate variation on social environmental systems at Boulder University.
“After the hurricane, there were many dead trees dropped to the ground, and this allows sunlight to reach the ground,” Iglesias said. “And with that, it is easier for biomass to descend, promoting fire if there is a switch. This is soon. Another consequence of these fires is that they represent access for firefighters. So there are many logs blocking roads.”
This happened last week in the Polk Prefecture of North Carolina, where firefighters struggled to navigate among fallen trees and contain nearly 500-acre fire in the area, Blue Ridge public ray reports. These fallen trees can be a fire -for years after a hurricane, especially in the southeast, where dried pines are highly burned.
For example, in 2018, Hurricane Michael Diecigis about 1.3 million acres of Longleaf pin habitat in the Florida Panhandle, which later dried and fed Bertha Swamp Road’s fire in 2022, which burned more than 33,000 acres.
Some fire experts are also concerned that the extra sunlight on the landscape could trigger the growth of plants such as Rhododendron and Mount Laureur in the southern Appalachians that burn intensely if they fire.
“And now we have full sunlight on these areas that have not previously been full of sunlight,” Gary C. Wood, a retired North Carolina Forest Service, who now coordinates wild fire management strategies for the southeastern region of the Wild Fire Guidance, said to the post and courier. “So those things could really increase, growing, and that will have a possible effect of fire brigade.”
Fighting fire with fire
While extensive research clearly shows that climate change feeds more intense fires to the west, scientists still invent the direct climate bond for blazes in the southeast. But some studies show that warming establishes conditions that wild fires thrive throughout the region.
“It is expected that dry more intense and more common in the southeast and many other regions of the country due to climate change,” Iglesias said. This could drastically increase the amount of forest burned in the southern Appalachians, according to 2024 study.
To combat this, forest administrators in this area often ignite planned, contained fires known as prescribed burns, which help empty dry plants before they can feed larger hell. However, there are some ways to this strategy. More than 50 percent of the 751 million acres of forest land in the United States are privately owned, and these owners decide how their land is managed. This means that government agencies must receive permission from homeowners before emptying dropped trees after storm or allow prescribed burns on their land. There is a growing push of some groups to help homeowners in North Carolina embrace this fire control strategy, GRIST reports.
Another commitment is that climate change could reduce the number of days that country administrators can practice prescribed burns in the southeast, according to 2024 study. Vegetation should be dry enough to ignite and burn, but temperatures and winds must be moderately low to prevent the fire from exhausting – conditions less predictable as global temperatures are rising. Like wild fires, prescribed burns can also release air pollution, which can negatively affect air quality. My colleague Lee Hedgepeth covered this issuewhich currently takes place in Birmingham, Alabama.
At the same time the Trump administration has Place funding and employment of freezings in programs that support a wild fire department In recent weeks, leaving large boundaries of the country unprepared to take on large wild fires, say experts.
