60-acre wildfire in North Carolina slows after thunderstorm

BURKE COUNTY, N.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — Burned trees and thick smoke surrounded neighbors after a wildfire spread across 60 acres of land near Hidden Hills Venue on Burkemont Mountain, southwest of Morganton.

Burke County Emergency Management, the North Carolina Forest Service, and other fire departments responded to a report about the fire around 1:15 a.m. Friday, July 5.

“I knew about the fire, so I went to the little church down here at Burkemont Baptist, and I said, ‘Wow, that smokes near our cabin,'” said Valerie Kuentzel.

She and her husband, Walter, say they owned a cabin about a mile up the hill. As soon as they saw the smoke Friday, they rushed to their cabin to see how far the fire had gone.

But the smoke from the fire, forced them to stay at the bottom of the road.

“We need to get off the mountain because, with the winds coming, it’s a little nerve-wracking,” she said.

Fire officials burned a fire line a few feet away from the road to stop the wildfire as it headed up the mountain’s side. The thickness of the smoke has been varying for the last few hours for crews and residents.

“There’s more smoke now,” said Walter. “It started with the winds picking up, and there was more smoke sort of building up in the mountain. I think the fire people told us that the winds also shifted from blowing downhill and now they’re blowing uphill, which of course, puts us more at risk. So we’ve just been watching, looking for if there’s any flames popping up along the edge there.”

Management officials didn’t ask homeowners to evacuate. No homes in the area are being monitored by firefighters, and there were no immediate threats to any structures.

Fire crews patrolled the area every 10 minutes to keep the fire at bay. The Kuentzels were just waiting for rain.

“The rain comes here like it’s coming because I was just scared that you don’t know the direction it can change and we could be stuck up here,” Valerie said.

A small thunderstorm slowly toned down the fire’s intensity, leaving only a few small blazes under the brush.

State fire officials have not released the cause of the fire.

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