The Matts Creek Fire that spread across more than 11,000 acres of federal forest land was 100% contained as of Monday, more than two weeks after it began, officials said.
The Appalachian Trail and other nearby areas closed by the fire will reopen at 8 a.m. Tuesday, the U.S. Forest Service said.
Petites Gap Road by the Blue Ridge Parkway reopened Monday; the parkway itself was closed but reopened Nov. 21.
“Hikers reentering the burned area should take special care to watch for fire-weakened trees and unstable, burned ground, especially in wet or windy areas,” the Forest Service said in a statement.
U.S. Forest Service Supervisor Joby Timm said Monday he expected certain restrictions, such as limits on where campfires can be built, to remain in place.
As of Monday, the fire area measured 11,020 acres, or a little more than 17 square miles, a figure unchanged since the evening of Nov. 21. Officials said they don’t expect it to spread further.
“We’re very confident in what folks have done,” Timm said of firefighters’ efforts to keep the conflagration in check.
Forest Service officials on Monday provided U.S. Reps. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, and Bob Good, R-Campbell County, along with members of the media an update on the fire and a look at the scene from just past the James River Foot Bridge on the border of Amherst and Bedford counties, about 3.5 miles away from where firefighters were working that day.
The fire began Nov. 12 and measured 30 acres when initially spotted in the James River Face Wilderness in northern Bedford County. Firefighters had to hike for an hour and a half to two hours to reach it, said district ranger Lauren Stull.
“It’s a very remote location,” Stull said.
Drought conditions exacerbated the fire’s spread, and at the peak of firefighting efforts about 380 personnel were on the scene.
The fire is within federal land in the Jefferson National Forest, and although no homes were burned, nearby residents kept a wary eye on the situation as the blaze grew.
“It got closer to some communities than you would like to think,” Griffith said.
As the fire consumed trees, shrubs and leaf litter, smoke blew through nearby communities, triggering air quality alerts and closing schools in Amherst, Bedford and Rockbridge counties and the city of Buena Vista.
Big Island and Lexington saw the most hazardous conditions, said Margaret Key, air resource advisor with the Forest Service-led Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program.
Officials gathered air quality information via monitors set up at schools and local government administration buildings in smaller communities, Key said, “which was nice because then we have real data on the ground.”
Some of those air quality monitors are being donated to counties for their future use, Key said.
“I hope you don’t have a lot more smoke, but if they do, they’ll have some monitors already in place,” she said.
Firefighting conditions reached a turning point when about 3.5 inches of rain — more than a billion gallons of water — fell across the affected area on Nov. 21.
Since that day, the fire has not spread further, and firefighters continued to increase the amount of its containment.
Without that downpour to help firefighters’ efforts, said U.S. Forest Service fire management officer Brent Foltz, “I think we would be looking at a lot different picture.”
More than 80 personnel continued to work the scene on Monday, checking for hotspots and conducting repair work, such as fixing damage and minimizing soil erosion caused by firefighting activities, on some of the deepest and steepest parts of the forest.
Despite last week’s rain, drought conditions persist. On Monday, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality expanded a drought watch to cover 42 new counties, for a total of 55, while a drought warning now is in effect for seven counties in the Shenandoah region.
Among the counties newly covered under the watch are Bedford and Rockbridge, where the Matts Creek Fire is located and which were already considered to be in “moderate” to “severe” drought by the National Drought Mitigation Center before the fire began.
“While recent rain has helped alleviate dry conditions for the short term, it has not been sufficient to overcome the deficits observed in soil moisture, streamflow, and groundwater levels,” the DEQ said.
Meanwhile, the cause of the Matts Creek Fire has yet to be determined. Officials say it was caused by humans, not a lightning strike, but Timm estimated that a full investigation could take another two to three weeks.
The fire’s long-term effects on the forest remain to be seen. Most of the fire was of low to moderate intensity, with only some pockets of high intensity, which means much of the vegetation survived, Stull said.
“Overall, there’s not a lot of tree mortality,” Stull said.
At Monday’s briefing, four days after Thanksgiving, congressmen Good and Griffith expressed their appreciation, with Griffith saying “the firefighters did an amazing job” and Good giving thanks for the first responders and the recent rain.
“We’re just thankful for all the hard work that went into containing this fire,” Good said.
