High winds on Saturday led to falling trees and power lines, leaving people without power, damaging homes and debris blocking roadways. A fallen power line sparked a 75-acre fire in the Piney Grove area that threatened several houses.
“It was an extremely busy weekend for the 911 center and all emergency services,” said Macon County Emergency Services Director Warren Cabe. “A lot of that was due to weather-related incidents. We had numerous fires or reports of wildfires, the majority of those caused by downed power lines. We had issues with downed trees; we had a couple of structures damaged by fallen trees.”
Cabe said to his knowledge there were no injuries from the weather-related calls.
Forest fires
The high winds led to an uptick in wildfire activity in the area. The N.C. Forest Service said they responded to 91 wildfires across Western North Carolina over the weekend.
The NCFS indicated four fires in Macon County, but only two of them were bigger than an acre. One at Larkin Lake was five acres but was contained. The biggest one was at Piney Grove, which grew to 75 acres, but was contained as of 2:20 on Sunday. Cabe said there was also a fire near Wayah Bald on Sunday.
Macon County Ranger Benjamin Kenner with the N.C. Forest Service said all the fires were caused by downed power lines.
“Piney Grove is a true fire environment,” Keener said Monday. “We had an inch of rain that morning, but it dried out quickly with the sunshine, winds and humidity down to 15%.”
The fire sparked around 5 p.m. Saturday but was contained by 2 a.m. Keener said there were no evacuations issued and no structures were damaged, but that several houses were threatened.
“It was a great response from all the departments, they did it quickly,” Keener said. “They did structure protection, which greatly contributed to us not losing any houses. It was very erratic fire behavior, so it couldn’t have been any better of a response.”
Fire department units from Franklin, Mountain Valley, Burningtown and Cowee in Macon County plus Savannah in Jackson County joined the N.C. Forest Service and U.S. Forest Service in putting out the fire, Keener said.
While none of the local fires were man made, Keener warned people to limit any outdoor burning during this prime fire season, which runs until the leaves grow back on the trees.
“Don’t burn on dry, windy days,” Kenner stated. “If you have any questions about burning, contact the forest service or your local fire department.
Power outages
At 8 a.m. Saturday, Duke Energy had four outages impacting four of the 26,602 customers in the county. However, that changed as wind gusts, some more than 30 mph, continued through the day causing poles and overhead power lines to fall. District Manager Lisa Leatherman said by 7 p.m. there were 55 events impacting 2,201 customers at the peak for the storm. The high winds limited the work crews’ ability to lift the bucket trucks to work on overhead lines.
Sunday morning at 8 a.m. there were 46 events impacting 701 customers. Crews from upstate South Carolina arrived on Sunday to support restoration efforts. Leatherman said power was restored to all customers by 7 p.m. Sunday.
Haywood Electric Membership Cooperative customers in south Macon County also experienced outages. There were a maximum of 253 outages among its roughly 2,400 member owners in Macon County, according to Mitch Bearden, Haywood EMC manager of marketing and economic development. Haywood EMC covers customers primarily in Otto up to Scaly Mountain and to the outskirts of Highlands.
All the Macon County outages were caused by tree limbs falling on power lines due to the high winds, Bearden said. Most of the tree branches were from outside the right of way, including taller trees with really large branches that broke off.
“Our linemen worked as quickly as possible,” Bearden said. “The largest issue was that there was no one large single outage, it was a handful of outages in multiple locations.”