Massive blaze struck Croatan National Forest in 2023. Next fire on NC coast could be much worse.

On Wednesday April 19, 2023, a campfire may have sparked a wildfire in a pine forest in the core of the 160,000-acre Croatan National Forest, about 20 miles southwest of New Bern.

Known as the Great Lakes Fire, the blaze spread from its source to several dozen acres. Then it began expanding with fury.

Spurred on by strong winds, the fire was stoked by parched vegetation covering thousands of acres of pocosin wetlands .  In just two days the fire rushed 16 miles towards the southern boundary of New Bern as smoke darkened skies and blanketed nearby housing developments.

The massive wildfire highlighted the challenges of protecting communities in North Carolina’s rapidly developing areas where the built environment intermingles with nature, known as the  wildland-urban interface, or WUI.

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North Carolina has more WUI acres than any other U.S. state, presenting complex challenges for fire management, public safety and ecological restoration.

This article is the first in the three-part investigative series Coastal Kindling , from Carolina Public Press . The series examines the problem of highly flammable woodlands and wetlands in the state’s coastal regions. Later articles focus on the underlying factors contributing to this wildfire risk and potential solutions .

Prone to massive conflagrations

The Great Lakes Fire is a good place to see how all of North Carolina, not just the coast, is adjusting to wildfire and development in the WUI and offers a look at some of the efforts to address the problem.

By April 20, the sprawling Great Lakes Fire blossomed to thousands of acres and would eventually require more than 200 firefighters to battle and contain the threat.

Public agencies mounted an effective response, however, they also had a bit of good luck. Rain showers and a shift in wind came just in time to stall the massive fire in which no structures or lives were lost.

“We don’t know what the outcome would have been if we had one more day of the same fire behavior and weather parameters,” Croatan National Forest fire management officer David Nelson told Carolina Public Press.

While the Croatan fire was distinguished by its intensity and size, it also drew attention to the spillover of housing to the edges of wildlands, demonstrating the threat and cost of forest fires on the Carolina coast.

Climate change may also be a factor: warmer temperatures, more persistent droughts and increased tree mortality may compound the future risk of wildfire .

The location of the 32,156 acre Great Lakes Fire, however, wasn’t a fluke. Pocosin-fueled fires occur historically in five- to 20-year intervals. In the past, large wildfires have seared the Croatan National Forest, including the Pocosin Fire of 1955, which burned 73,000 acres; the Fish Day Fire, which consumed 25,000 acres in 1994; and the Dad Fire that covered 22,000 acres in 2012.

The next major coastal forest blaze will likely happen within the next two decades. But it could also flare up tomorrow.

“We have 80,000 acres of pocosins, 30,000 just burned, but we have 50,000 that are available to go right now,” Nelson said.

The forested Coastal Plain

Between New Bern and Morehead City, U.S. 70 and the future Interstate 42 runs past a patchwork of communities, Marine Corp Air Station Cherry Point, chunks of commercial sprawl and patches of private and public forestland.

Yet for a large number of North Carolinians who live in cities to the west of the forest, the area is the flat land between their homes and the beach.

“Most people have no idea they’re traveling through a national forest,” said Croatan National Forest district ranger Ron Hudson .

One of four national forests in North Carolina, the 160,000-acre Croatan National Forest south of New Bern is bordered by the Neuse and White Oak rivers and Bogue Sound on the Atlantic Ocean along its southern boundary. The Croatan’s inland landscape includes native and restored longleaf pine habitat, hardwood forests, saltwater estuaries , Carolina bays and  pocosins.

The Croatan National Forest, however, is just a fraction of the state’s forested Coastal Plain. Bounded by the ocean and the Piedmont to the west, the Coastal Plain includes 45% of the state’s land area. Within it are vast stretches of pine, hardwood and swamp forests.

The Coastal Plain includes hundreds of thousands acres of publicly managed lands on military bases, wildlife refuges, tribal lands, local parks and state forests.

The Coastal Plain also includes a large swath of commercial timberland. Timber company Weyerhaeuser, for example, manages 118,000 acres in Craven, Carteret and Jones counties, spokesperson Nancy Thompson said.

The areas in between these forested acres and protected lands, particularly near the coast, rivers and sounds, are experiencing rapid development. Between July 2022 and 2023, North Carolina added more people than any other state except Florida and Texas, according to the US Census Bureau.

While the population declined in some coastal areas, such as Dare, Tyrrell and Washington counties, other coastal communities are among the fastest-growing in the state, including Brunswick, Pender and Craven counties, with many newcomers moving into the WUI.

In Craven County for example, 76% of housing is in the WUI ; in Brunswick 89%; and 78% in Pender County.

Some of the growth in Craven County, for example, is new development spilling to the southwest and south of its historic New Bern downtown, towards thousands of acres of private and public forestland.

Among the recent developments is Bluewater Rise. The nearly 1,000-home community in southern New Bern also has undeveloped lots for dozens more single-family homes that range in price from $300,000 to $600,000.

The new community, with its meticulously manicured lawns, fenced-in yards and smoothly paved roads, provides a sense of safety and order. In contrast, the dense pine forests just yards away present a wilder and more unpredictable terrain.

A gravel road separates the community from commercial pine forests managed by Weyerhaeuser and beyond that: the Croatan National Forest’s pocosin wetlands.

Fighting fire in the Croatan National Forest

Unlike the state’s two largest national forests in the mountains, the Pisgah and Nantahala, Croatan isn’t as much a focus of recreational users. Hunting, freshwater angling, off-road vehicle driving, wildlife viewing and illegal shooting ranges are among the draws in the forest interior.

The wide flat gravel road connecting the community of Kuhns on the forest’s western boundary to Great Lake, one of four Carolina bays – a natural wetland – in the geographic center is among the network of roads cut through the forest.

Some roads are the legacy of commercial timber production, but most are a critical piece of infrastructure supporting land managers throughout the state’s Coastal Plain.

One of those land managers is the US Forest Service, which has made a focused effort to restore the threatened native longleaf pine and wiregrass habitat that, in its heyday, swept across 90 million acres of the Southeastern Coastal Plain from Virginia to East Texas.

The road system is also critical infrastructure to contain and battle wildfires.

On the afternoon of April 19, 2023, the Forest Service responded to a 911 call reporting smoke from a fire that began near Great Lake Road just beyond the southwestern corner of Craven County’s boundary. The fire spread to about 30 acres, however 20-mile-per-hour winds pushed the fire northeast, towards Great Lake.

Fire crews attempted to get ahead of the fire, but establishing a fire line is difficult work in swampy, organic soil. Typically pairs of tractor-plows work in tandem digging firelines and winching each other from the muck. Digging out of wet soil and plowing fire lines is slow work, sometimes impossible.

“We threw everything we had at the fire,” Nelson said.

By the end of the day, the initial front of the fire, fueled by wind, low humidity, and 12-foot brush layered atop 12 feet of flammable organic soil, burned past Great Lake and through the pocosin-dense Sheep Ridge Wilderness.

In all, it dashed 16 miles in a single day and night, northeast towards the U.S. 70 population corridor that borders the eastern edge of the Croatan National Forest between Havelock and New Bern.

The U.S. Forest Service initially coordinated the fire response, but as the fire expanded, the agency delegated authority to an incident command team – an interagency group of experts who coordinate logistics, operations and information. Firefighter and public safety are the U.S. Forest Service’s top priorities in wildfire response.

Fortunately, the initial column of flames fizzled once it hit thousands of acres of longleaf pine forestland that the Forest Service had burned in 2022 and 2023. The agency’s fire prevention strategy is to treat areas with controlled burns, creating a buffer between hot burning pocosins and residential communities.

But on April 21, the wind shifted towards the north and the flames flared again, this time, towards Catfish Lake Road, a 100-foot-wide gravel road framed by canals on either side and a power line corridor. The flames, however, leapt over the road in roughly 30 spots, continuing the march northward, darkening skies and spewing ash miles from the fire.

“It jumped the road like it wasn’t there,” Nelson said, adding that the 30 spot fires were too much to handle due to unsafe conditions and areas inaccessible to equipment and firefighters.

On the northern boundary of the forest, the absence of longleaf pine forests between pocosins and development, he said, makes it difficult to conduct prescribed burns to create a protective buffer to muzzle wildfire as it had on the US 70 corridor.

The 30 spot fires united and continued along the north-south border of Jones County and Craven County towards the boundary of the national forest and a strip of private timberland managed by Weuerhauser. Beyond that: hundreds of homes, including ones in Bluewater Rise.

Craven County emergency services director Stanley Kite managed the response among the county’s multiple volunteer and professional fire departments.

Kite said a flurry of 911 calls and Facebook posts came from people seeking information about the fire and whether they should evacuate.

“Once they saw the activity of the fire trucks and the amount of smoke the anxiety levels went up,” he said. “We were trying to be proactive and in place until the highest threat, what they call the head of the fire, was diminished.”

By the morning of April 22, the fire was only 10% contained and covered more than 30,000 acres, according to a U.S. Forest Service video that Nelson posted on Facebook . He anticipated that the fire could spread beyond the National Forest boundary.

Although an order to evacuate never came, “we were sitting on the edge of that threshold,” Kite said.

Fortunately, the winds shifted, the humidity increased, and rainfall helped contain the fire.

Hudson of the Forest Service credits the fire crews with ensuring that residents and property were unharmed.

“I was really proud of all the folks (who) came together to fight the fire and keep it from getting out of control,” Hudson said. “They did a wonderful job.”

The fire, however, continued to smolder in the organic peat soil of the pocosins for several weeks in areas of the national forest that forest managers modified and drained decades ago.

The difference in how the fire burned in altered landscape versus natural spaces, Hudson said, highlights the importance of a healthy, functioning landscape in effectively containing a wildfire that threatens lives and property.

“What we’re seeing is that the goals overlap where we can protect communities and the ecosystem at the same time,” Hudson said.

“We’re looking closely at restoring wetlands, not just for nature’s sake, but it helps us protect the community as well.”

Out-of-control wildfires are not only potentially deadly, but are far more difficult and expensive to contain. The estimated cost of the Great Lakes Fire was $12 million. Had it spread to neighboring communities, the impact could have been far greater.

While the fire remains under investigation, the U.S. Forest Service alleges that the wildfire was human-caused, which, according to the North Carolina Forest Service, is the state’s leading cause of wildfires.

Warmer summers and more persistent droughts may also contribute to longer fire seasons in the future that could include bigger and more frequent blazes.  The threat poses a problem if wildfire flares near a growing population that isn’t expecting it.

“The Great Lakes Fire really brought a lot of attention to (wildfire),” Hudson said. “It was scary. We want people to think about the future, to plan and not forget about what could have happened.”