Hancock County Woods Fire Update

Fire crews make progress in containing the woods fire off of Highway 90 between Pearlington and Waveland.

Mississippi Forestry Commission officials tell us that as of late last night, the fire is now 95 percent contained.

A total of 419 acres of land have burned since the fire began a week ago.

Wednesday night, the blaze started to get dangerously close to the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office headquarters, causing employees there to take preventative measures.

The prevalence of wetlands in the area and high winds have also made firefighting efforts difficult for fire crews over the past few days. Sheriff Ricky Adam said, “As the wind changes direction, it picks up or dies down and as of yesterday evening the wind really picked up, and it got fairly close to the facility. But the ember is on the roof. That was a major concern for us so we kept teams on a roof.”

Kevin Craft with the Mississippi Forestry Commission said, “Pretty much everywhere on the fire, the fire surface is wet, so we just had to be really careful everywhere that we go and everywhere that we do trying to stop the progression of this fire. And what we’re doing right now is something called an indirect action where we’re getting out in front of the fire a little so we can back burn off of it and take away all the fuel from the fire.”

Today’s rain in the area should help to douse some of the remaining hot spots from this fire, but fire officials continue to ask residents in the areas near the fire to still stay alert over the next few days.