SUFFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — A four-alarm brush fire burned an estimated 30 to 50 acres and took more than 70 firefighters to help get it under control, Suffolk Fire Chief Mike Barakey said Thursday.
The fire, which had threatened homes and buildings in the Holy Neck area of southwest Suffolk, started just after noon and was declared under control at 5:57 p.m. No people or animals were harmed in the fire, officials said.
“Today, the conditions were terrible for a fire to happen,” said Suffolk Assistant Fire Chief Nicholas Savage. “We had dry, windy conditions. We had a large, moving brush fire this afternoon, approximately between 30 [to] 50 acres.”
A fire watch will continue overnight to make sure the fire does not restart. No one was injured, and fire apparatus and resources have started to demobilize.
The brush fire came as the city put burning restrictions in place earlier in the day.
The brush fire was in the area of the 8300 block of Pineview Road near Vicksburg Road and Bott Lane. Suffolk Fire & Rescue crews were at the scene working to contain and put out the fire.
“This fire involved a large grass field, to an agricultural field, to a two-to-three-year-old cutover,” Savage said, “and then it finally ended in a larger pine stand that had probably 20-year-old mature pine trees in it, so it had a little bit of everything.”
No structures caught fire, and high winds posed a challenge to contain it, but as of about 4 p.m., the fire was estimated to be about 90% contained, and no homes were evacuated.
The city said Pineview Road, Vicksburg Road and Bott Lane were likely to be closed to traffic into Thursday evening.
Isle of Wight County, Portsmouth and Chesapeake fire crews also helped Suffolk Fire & Rescue with the fire.
Fire crews were still on scene Friday to extinguish hot spots. It ensures the fire does not spread to any unburned areas. Crews observed areas within the established fire line had rekindled, according to officials.
This remains an ongoing investigation.
