Crews on Sunday made progress containing a wildfire in South Carolina’s Carolina Forest, where residents had been ordered to evacuate several neighborhoods, according to Horry county fire rescue.
Video showed some people running down the street as smoke filled the sky. But by late Sunday afternoon, the fire department announced that evacuees of Carolina Forest – which is west of the coastal resort city of Myrtle Beach – could return home.
That wildfire was one of several burning in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee amid dry conditions and gusty winds.
The region had faced an increased fire danger because it was critically dry and there was very low relative humidity, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 175 fires burned 6.6 sq miles (17sq km) in South Carolina. The state’s governor, Henry McMaster, declared a state of emergency on Sunday to support the wildfire response effort, and a statewide burning ban remained in effect.
The South Carolina forestry commission estimated on Sunday evening that the blaze in the Carolina Forest area had burned 2.5 sq miles (6.5 sq km) with 30% of it contained. No structures had succumbed to the blaze, and no injuries had been reported as of Sunday morning, officials said.
In North Carolina, the US Forest Service said fire crews were working to contain multiple wildfires burning in four forests across the state on Sunday. The largest, about 400 acres (162 hectares), was at Uwharrie national forest, roughly 50 miles (80.47km) east of Charlotte. The Forest Service said on Sunday afternoon that it had made progress on the fire, reaching about one-third containment.
The small south-western town of Tryon in Polk county, North Carolina, urged some residents to evacuate on Saturday as a fire spread rapidly there. The evacuations remained in effect on Sunday. A decision on whether to lift them was expected to be made on Monday after intentional burns are set to try to stop the fire from spreading.
That fire has burned about 500 acres (202 hectares) as of late Sunday, with 0% containment, according to the Polk county emergency management-fire marshal’s office. The North Carolina forest service was conducting water drops and back-burning operations on the ground, and area residents should expect a lot of smoke during those operations, officials said.
Officials have not said what caused any of the fires.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, at least six active fires burned late on Sunday, with nearly 3,700 acres burned over the previous week, a summary from the state forestry commission said.
And four small active wildfires burned on Sunday in Tennessee, the state’s agriculture department said, though all were controlled by early Monday. Those blazes were among 81 wildfires that had burned about 822 acres statewide over the previous week, the Tennessee agriculture department added.
Associated Press contributed reporting
