Single Publication

Great Lakes Fire Evening Update, April 25, 2023

Join us for an in-person community meeting on the evening of Thursday, April 27th, from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm. at Creekside Elementary School. The school is located at 2790 Landscape Drive in New Bern. This meeting will also be hosted virtually on Facebook Live at https://fb.me/e/5RLxG0dUj.

Note: There have been an overabundance of offers from the public regarding donations to the fire efforts. We are extremely grateful to the community for the support shown to firefighters. We currently do not have the capacity for processing and storing donations on site. In lieu of donations to the Great Lakes Fire incident, we ask that you consider making a monetary donation to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation.

Great Lakes Fire: The Great Lakes Fire, located within Croatan National Forest, one mile South-Southeast of New Bern, started on April 19th. The cause of the fire is under investigation. It is burning in pocosin swamp and mixed fuels. The fire is burning within the imprint of the 2012 Dad Fire, which burned roughly 21,331 acres. No structures have been lost and none are currently threatened.

Acreage: 32,400 acres Containment: 30%

Personnel and Equipment: 184 total personnel; 4 Helicopters, 15 Type-6 Engines, 22 Type-2 Tractor Plow Units, 1 Fixed Wing Aircraft, and 1 tracked vehicle.

Today: Crews worked today to continue strengthening containment lines and monitoring the fire perimeter for smoke. Reconnaissance flights took place to look for heat signatures within the fire interior. No visible smoke was seen throughout much of the fire imprint with the exception of the fire burning in the organic soils in the southeast portion of the fire. The 8-acre spot fire showed no growth today, and firefighters continued to mop up any smoldering pockets within the interior.

As indicated by Incident Commander Trainee Shane Hardee during the morning briefing, “if we don’t make plans for the ‘what if’ factor, this fire could wake up down the road, so we need to plan and prepare for what could be if the fire conditions change two, three, four weeks from now.”

Weather and Fire Behavior: Sunny skies and drying conditions were predominant today, but no intensification of the wildfire was identified.

“The fire is not currently burning laterally, but vertically down into the soil,” noted Operations Section trainee Shawn Nagle.

Due to the organic nature of pocosin fuels, heat from the fire may not be seen in the form of smoke or flames on the surface but can be picked up from infrared scanning on reconnaissance flights a few feet below the surface of the ground.

Air quality: Information on current air quality data for North Carolina can be found at https://www.airnow.gov/.

Closures: Road closures on County Line Road and Catfish Lake Road remain in effect. Updates to road closures surrounding the fire can be found at https://drivenc.gov/.

Temporary Flight Restriction: A Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) remains in place over the fire area; information can be found at Federal Aviation Administration website. This is necessary to protect aerial operations. If there are intrusions into the Temporary Flight Restrictions, we must stop aerial operations.