Blaze closed road Sunday
By Robin Fitzgerald
The Sun Herald
Copyright 2007 The Sun Herald
HARRISON COUNTY, Miss. - Fire officials expect the remnants of a wildfire along 28th Street and Canal Road to keep smoldering for several days.
The blaze that threatened 750 acres by Monday started by accident Saturday evening when an 11-year-old boy was burning a cardboard box for his grandfather, authorities said.
“Short of a miracle, and I don’t see rain in the forecast, it’s going to take a few days to burn out,” said Todd Matthews, spokesman for the Mississippi Forestry Commission.
The grandfather, who wasn’t identified, faces a suppression charge of possibly thousands of dollars to cover the Forestry Commission’s time and resources, Matthews said.
Wind whipped the fire out of control on Sunday, prompting a small-scale evacuation and the closing of Canal Road. City and rural volunteer firefighters also responded, some working overnight. The fire flared back up Monday morning.
The fire was brought under control around its perimeter, but wetlands won’t support heavy equipment that could put out interior blazes, said George Mixon, Harrison County fire marshal.
February and March are the worst months for wildfires in South Mississippi, according to Matthews. A rain deficit and an abundance of downed trees from Hurricane Katrina don’t help matters, he said.
The fire also raised concerns of some residents when it burned old dredge piles near Canal Road that have been found to be contaminated with dioxin, which causes cancer. Dioxin was dredged out of the canal years ago after it ran off the nearby Seabee Center.
Bob Fisher, a Navy consultant who has tested the piles, said forest fires do not get hot enough to release dioxin from soil into the air.
“It is no problem for short-term workers,” Fisher said. “We’ve done the analysis and, even for long-term workers, the levels in those piles would need to be five times higher.”
Fisher said his concern would be that vegetation that has been anchoring the contaminated dredge is now gone, opening up the possibility of letting the soil erode off the mounds and move around.