Crime & Safety
Brush Fire Contained in Great Seneca Park
Between two to three acres are smoldering in overly dry woodlands; but fire officials say there is 'no immediate threat' to nearby homes.
More than two acres of brush caught fire between Gaithersburg and Germantown Sunday in a hard-to-reach area of Great Seneca Park that required specialized tanker trucks and helicopter reconnaissance to get under control.
Fifty firefighters worked for more than three hours to douse and stamp out the smoldering woodlands, roughly three-quarters of a mile southwest of Blunt Road’s intersection with Wightman Road. Containing the fire required several fire engines, all-terrain vehicles and three brush trucks to carry roughly 10,000 gallons of water to the fire site.
“There’s no immediate danger to any communities,” said Asst. Chief Mike McAdams of Montgomery County Fire Rescue Services. “The problem is the access back there. The area is in an isolated section of brush, but we needed to contain the area. … At this point, we have two to three acres that have burned. We have [fire crews] completely around the fire; we’re just making sure we have the hotspots out.”
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McAdams said it is unlikely a cause will be found, but not unusual to see such an outbreak, given the conditions.
“In a sense, it is brushfire season. We’ve had the relatively dry winter. So with no snowfall, we’ve had almost no rain, the ground is dry. A couple days ago, we had a brush fire [in Germantown], and we had some of those windy conditions. It doesn’t take much to push the fire across with this dry brush. … That can spell for a quick fire spread into a residential area, so we want to stay ahead of that.”
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