Dry Air, Gusty Winds Aggravate Brush and Forest Fires in South

More than 2,000 firefighters and National Guardsmen on Sunday battled forest fires that have charred more than 47,000 acres in Alabama since the first of the year. Dry winds continued to whip up brush fires in northern and central Louisiana.

Frank Sego of the Alabama Forestry Commission said that firefighters were battling 310 blazes on Saturday. The fires caused no serious injuries or evacuations, but 3,257 acres went up in smoke.

“That was one day alone,” Sego said. “That now brings the total since the first of January to 5,158 wildfires--and that totals out to over 47,000 acres.”

He said that 60 of Alabama’s 67 counties remained under a fire alert Sunday as extremely dry air and winds up to 20 m.p.h. spread the fire hazard across the state. The National Weather Service saw no chance of rain in the region before Tuesday.

State and federal foresters in Louisiana on Sunday placed all available personnel in the northern part of the state as the danger of forest fires was enhanced by winds gusting up to 30 m.p.h.

Five firefighting crews were sent to a blaze near Columbia, in northeastern Louisiana, where more than 100 acres of a young pine plantation burned out of control under gusting winds.

An army of firefighters Saturday night contained flames that burned 1,000 acres in the Kisatchie National Forest in north-central Louisiana, a fire that officials said apparently was ignited by sparks from a train.

In South Carolina, where more than 6,000 acres have been burned in the last 10 days, officials said that moderating weather had slowed the progress of 26 fires that continued to burn across an undetermined number of acres in the southern part of the state.

A spokesman for the South Carolina Fire Commission said that 43 fires had been extinguished or controlled Sunday over 315 acres, with the most damage sustained in Francis Marion National Forest, on the coast just north of Charleston.