NC Evans Road; massive burnout planned

Firefighters on the 40,000 acre Evans Road fire in eastern North Carolina are planning a massive burnout operation on Friday or as soon as the weather permits. They want to remove the unburned fuel between the east side of the fire and N.C. 94 by burning it under controlled conditions, rather than waiting for the main fire to burn through the area. This two-day project and other burnouts will add at least another 10,000-20,000 acres to the fire. They had hoped to do this on Thursday but heavy smoke prevented aircraft from flying.

The map below shows the fire perimeter in yellow as mapped by fire personnel, and heat detected by satellites early Thursday morning in red, orange, and black. Click on the map to see a larger version.