Jacksonville-area forest rangers help fight fires in North Carolina

Two forest rangers from Nassau and Clay counties were part of a 12-person team that helped keep a massive North Carolina wildfire from burning homes.

Michael Seymour and Matthew Nelson fought a nearly 6,500-acre fire in South Mountain State Park, which is between Charlotte and Asheville.

“It was a lot of smoke; still, you could see where the fire was still burning on the mountain,” said Seymour.

They said one of their jobs was to look for hot spots and put them out.

To help find them, the pair said an aircraft would use infrared imaging to locate the hot spots and then they downloaded a map to their cellphones to see how to get to each spot.

“Usually it was 3 to 4 mile trips we would go find for one hot spot,” Nelson said.

The crews took vehicles out to carry water.

“It holds 300 gallons of water, has multiple feet of hose and a pump in the back to draft water out of streams if you need to,” said Nelson.

They also used a lot of hand tools to extinguish the hot ash.

They said in the almost two weeks they worked there, they could tell people appreciated the efforts put in to save the state park and homes surrounding it.

“It wasn’t unusual to go to dinner after we worked and people would come by shake your hand pat you on the back to show how thankful they were,” Seymour said.

Cox Media Group