Prescribed burns take place at Carolina Beach State Park
CAROLINA BEACH, NC (WWAY) — The “Women-in-Fire Prescribed Training Exchange” intentionally setting 30 acres ablaze in Carolina Beach State Park on March 1st.
“With a team of folks, we’re using drip torches and we are lighting fire in sort of a way that’s planned out and we are hoping to achieve our objectives for this unit, which is a lot of fuel reduction mainly,” explained Adair McNear, a member of NC WTREX.
Prescribed burns help with forest management by reducing insects and helping prevent wildfires.
“It promotes biodiversity, particularly of certain plant communities that are native here. A lot of those communities have evolved with fire on the landscape. When folks tend to suppress fire on the land scape, those same plants can get out competed in the shade,” McNear explained.
The NC WTREX program is designed to help women learn more about fighting forest fires by using a hands-on approach. Carolina Beach Fire Department was also on hand to provide assistance as well.
“The big take home message for folks who might see fire and might feel like it’s dangerous, is that controlled burns are very safe and a lot of care and precautions go into planning a controlled burn, as well as training individuals to carry out a controlled burn in a safe way for both people on the fire and residents around,” said Michelle Ly, another member of WTREX.
If you want to learn more about the NC WTREX Program, you can do so here.
WTREX – North Carolina Prescribed Fire Council (ncprescribedfirecouncil.org)
