JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Wildfires in the Carolinas have been burning since last week. In western North Carolina, firefighters are still struggling to contain them. A few homes have been destroyed, and several neighborhoods had to be evacuated. Blue Ridge Public Radio's Gerard Albert III reports these fires are burning in an area which was damaged by Hurricane Helene just six months ago.
GERARD ALBERT III, BYLINE: Polk County, a rural area about an hour south of Asheville, was struggling to recover from Hurricane Helene. Then came the fires. Three of them are currently burning almost 5,000 acres, mostly in rural areas of the Appalachian Mountains. The county's emergency manager, Bobby Arledge, says Helene has made things worse.
BOBBY ARLEDGE: Well, the debris and the blowdowns and stuff from the hurricane is doing nothing but fueling these fires. The longer they lay there and the longer they dry out, you know, the worse the fire burns.
ALBERT: The state's forest service is leading the firefighting efforts. Along with help from local departments, there are now about 200 firefighters, and more are on the way this week. But officials aren't feeling optimistic. Jeremy Waldrop is a spokesman for the Forest Service.
JEREMY WALDROP: That storm, when it came through, it's changed how we are fighting fire currently. We're having to assess things. We're having to go use different tools that are in the process of being made.
ALBERT: Like new digital maps. The amount of downed trees - what firefighters refer to as fuel - is enormous. But it's not the only way damage from the storm is making it harder to fight the fires. E.J. Dwigans is also with the state's Forest Service. He says steep roads and bridges along the Green River, where the two biggest fires are burning, are barely repaired after the storm.
EJ DWIGANS: Access has been an issue with small gravel roads - usually one way in, one way out - so it's really hard to get resources into where these fires are.
ALBERT: Officials were cautiously optimistic that rain on Sunday night would help slow the fires. Dwigans says the rain has only made things worse.
DWIGANS: That limited amount of precipitation that we received has now made some of these roads slippery and wet. Some of our fire lines have become kind of muddy and slick. So that's another thing that our firefighters are going to have to deal with out there today.
ALBERT: North Carolina Governor Josh Stein said Sunday that the state was approved for a federal fire management assistance grant. It will help cover the costs of fighting the fire. Arledge, with Polk County, says it's a small relief for residents still trying to recover from the worst storm in the state's history.
ARLEDGE: Well, we lost multiple, multiple houses down there. People are still trying to recover. So this fire now - throw it on top of that - it's been a nightmare for those people living in that area.
ALBERT: Two fires are still growing, and another one burning in South Carolina is coming closer to the North Carolina border. For NPR News, I'm Gerard Albert III, in Asheville.
(SOUNDBITE OF RENE AUBRY'S "WATER FALLS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.