Although a quarter to a half inch of rain fell across the land that is burning in the Croatan National Forest Tuesday night, it wasn’t nearly enough to douse the blaze that started on April 19.
Operations Chief Derrick Moore said eastern North Carolina would need to see a lot more rain and it would have to fall much more often to put out the Great Lakes Fire.
“We appreciate all the rain we get. It helps,” he said, “However, the fire is, again, it's still not out. Reason being is that this fire in a lot of places it’s seeded in those deep organic soils and rainfall just can't get that deep into the ground that easily.”
He said that may not happen for quite a while.
"We would need more and more and more of these rainfall events to eventually extinguish the fire fully 100%, and that may not happen until hurricane season,” Moore said, “That's just reality for organic fires and in this part of the world.”
The fire footprint remains at 32,400 acres, and it is now 80 percent contained.
