Firefighting efforts on Neversink Mountain continued Monday with a focus on perimeter control and safety.
“What we are looking to do is control the perimeter,” said Jeremy Hamilton, incident commander for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, or DCNR, forestry division.
The division is leading the firefighting and mop-up operation, which is expected to continue for several days.
“We want to make sure that with the wind and heat in the coming days the fire is not going to come out of the existing footprint,” he said.
Crews also are removing hazardous trees that could fall and addressing other safety risks to the firefighters and general public.
Hamilton asked people to stay off the mountain until the fire is declared in active.
The outlook improved significantly due to the hard work put in since the fire broke out late Friday night.
Crews continue to battle wildfire on Neversink Mountain in Berks
Crews were working Friday night through the weekend and into Monday to keep the fire from spreading to nearby buildings and causing further damage to the public and privately owned lands on the mountain, parts of which are in Reading and Lower Alsace and Cumru townships.
“With the amount of work put in over the last few days and with the precipitation overnight, things are actually starting to look really good out there,” Hamilton said.
The fire is still considered an active fire and will be until it is fully contained and deemed to be extinguished, he said.
“And it probably will remain so even after we don’t have people on it,” he added.
A reassessment and better mapping of the affected area Sunday determined about 137 acres of privately and publicly owned woodland was affected by the blaze.
The investigation is ongoing, he said, noting the cause and place of origin of the fire will not be released until it concludes.
State protocol requires all wildfires be treated as active crime scenes until their investigations are completed, he noted.
Hamilton could not say just how many departments and crews responded. In addition to professional and volunteer companies from throughout Berks County, reinforcements came from throughout the state and beyond.
“We have cooperators from as far away as the state of Montana that actually came to help us,” he said.
These include a Hotshot crew of elite wildland firefighters from that state’s forestry division as well as a team of Montanan Native Americans, members of the Cherokee Nation, from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The crews brought knowledge, equipment and labor power.
The Native American team relieved the exhausted members of DCNR District 15’s support crew from McKeen County in maintaining the fire perimeters on the mountaintop high above the bend in the Schuylkill River.
The support crew is made up of volunteer firefighters from several companies, who all have full-time jobs, crew member Tim Christman explained. They are reimbursed by the state for work time lost and expenses, he said.
The McKeen men put in about six hours of work Sunday after their five-hour drive to Berks. After another six hours Monday, they took a lunch break before starting the long drive home.
Christman said the support team was called last week to a forest fire on the Blue Mountain near the Lehigh Water Gap. With that fire now contained, the crew divided available members, sending six to the Huntingdon Pike Fire near Canoe Creek State Park in Blair County, and six to the Neversink fire.
There are about six wildfires currently active in the state, according to the Fire, Weather and Avalanche Center, a nonprofit that provides real-time interactive maps.
Since July 1 there have been 598 wildfires in Pennsylvania, Hamilton said, and the total number so far this year reached roughly 2,000.
“The vast majority are human caused,” he said.
Fire erupts on Neversink Mountain in Reading; battle continues [updated]
Although some are the result of arson, more often they are accidental or caused by carelessness. Campfires, trash burning and equipment sparks can all start fires, especially in dry conditions, he said.
Hamilton cautioned the public to heed burn bans despite the rain Sunday.
“People go back to burning because they think it is OK if there is rain, but that wasn’t enough,” he said, “and it’s going to start drying out again.”
The Berks County commissioners have enacted a ban on open burning. The measure prohibits burning leaves, grass, twigs, litter, paper, vegetative matter involved with land clearing, or any sort of debris outdoors, either in a burn barrel or on the ground.
Violators are subject to being charged with a summary offense, with increasing fines for repeated violations.
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