Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
Firefighters and state forestry workers from Tangipahoa and St. Tammany parishes were trying to contain a forest fire Tuesday that stretched across 300 acres with flames reaching as high as 100 feet, threatening a rural residential area, a state forest official said.
Tuesday evening, the thickest part of the fire was north of Robert, between Louisiana 1077 and Louisiana 445, heading south toward U.S. 190, said Epney Brasher, Tangipahoa Parish forester.
The state Department of Agriculture and Forestry and several fire agencies from Tangipahoa and St. Tammany parishes had been fighting the fire since 10:30 a.m., Brashner said.
The Forestry Department had a dozen units with bulldozers plowing ditch-like “fire suppression lines” in an attempt to stop the blaze, which had already spread southeast into St. Tammany Parish, Brasher said.
“We’re trying to put in fire suppression lines with dozers to keep the fire from getting fresh fuel,” Brasher said. “But the fire is so large — flame heights have been like 100 feet — and it’s spotting. There are embers 50 and 100 yards ahead of it,” which are leaping over the barriers and catching trees on the other side, she said.
She said there are residents on Gottschalck Road, in a rural area of Tangipahoa Parish near Louisiana 1077, whose houses are being threatened by the fire. She didn’t know whether they had been evacuated.