LITTLE ROCK — Emergency workers Thursday contained a woodland wildfire that burned up to 1,500 acres near Ola in Yell County and prompted authorities to urge more than 1,200 residents to evacuate their homes.
Just hours after the blaze was brought under control in the drought-stricken county, Gov. Mike Beebe surveyed the devastation from a helicopter and then on foot.
The governor thanked dozens of firefighters and other workers, and visited with a family that lost some vehicles and tools that had been stored in a shop destroyed by the blaze. Earlier, authorities had thought the shop was a vacant barn.
The fire also destroyed a vacant home. No one was hurt.
“You could see how fast the fire was moving [Wednesday] night” because of long, narrow stretches of woodland that had burned, Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said.
The fire — first reported about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday — was fully contained by about 3 a.m. Thursday, sheriff’s Capt. John Foster said.
About 4:30 a.m., residents of a rural area along Arkansas 10 who had been ordered Wednesday to evacuate their homes were told that it was safe to return, he said.
At one point, authorities had urged all 1,271 residents of Ola to leave, but that evacuation was voluntary and many stayed put.
Foster said the fire probably burned 1,400 to 1,500 acres, including a pine-tree plantation. Deltic Timber Corp., which has a mill near the site of the blaze’s origin along Arkansas 10 near Ola, owned some of the land and helped battle the flames.
In light of the fire and the lingering drought, a regional official with the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department quickly ordered a halt to much of the roadside mowing in six District 8 counties: Yell, Faulkner Johnson, Pope, Perry and Van Buren.
Such mowing is often done with a bush hog — a large rotary mower that sometimes is attached to the back of a tractor. If the blade of the bush hog strikes a rock, it can generate sparks that can start fires.
Foster said it was his understanding that a bush hog being used to mow grass beside the highway started Wednesday’s blaze. “It’s believed to be accidental,” he said.
Department spokesman Randy Ort said Thursday that the department, which sometimes uses contract mowers, had some mowers in the area Wednesday. He said there’s no way to know if one of them started the fire.
“It appears it was one of the mowers who first detected the fire,” Ort said. “A mower today [Thursday] said yes, he saw the fire about 400 yards behind him” but had no idea what started it.
Upon seeing it, the mower turned his tractor back and “did what he could to extinguish the flames, obviously with no luck” using a routinely carried extinguisher, Ort said.
The mower could not get cell-phone service in the rural area. But a passing motorist later got a cell phone to work and reported the fire to authorities, Ort said.
That person “came to the very reasonable assumption it [the fire] had been caused by the mowing,” Ort said. “We’re not denying that possibility.” But he said, “I don’t think anybody knows exactly what caused it.”
Scott Mullis, the department’s District 8 engineer in Russellville, said he has temporarily limited such mowing in the six counties to areas where it’s needed for safety issues, such as drivers being able to see well and for sign visibility.
“Unless we get a tremendous amount of rain, we wouldn’t worry about it [any incomplete mowing that had been contracted out for July] until October,” when the next contract mowing is scheduled to begin, Mullis said.
After viewing the fire damage, DeCample said, “The governor was very impressed with the effort both by the firefighters” and other workers in dealing with the fire.
“Everyone worked together really well and kept things from being a lot worse than they” could have been, De-Cample said.
Front Section, Pages 10 on 07/27/2012