LITTLE ROCK — A woodlands wildfire just outside the Yell County town of Ola prompted authorities to urge its roughly 1,200 residents to evacuate their homes Wednesday.
No one had been hurt, authorities said.
The fire destroyed a vacant mobile home and a vacant barn outside Ola in the drought-stricken county, which is under a burn ban, said Jackey Broadstock, the county’s 911 supervisor.
Firefighters from area fire departments, the state, the U.S. Forestry Service and Deltic Timber Corp. were struggling to contain the fast-moving blaze, which authorities believe started along a roadside late Wednesday morning.
Two single-engine air tankers dumped water onto the blaze throughout the day, said Sheila Doughty, a spokesman for the Arkansas Forestry Commission.
The evacuation of Ola, about 11 miles east of Danville, was voluntary, said Jeff Gilkey, director of the Yell County Office of Emergency Management.
“It’s a precautionary evacuation because this fire is moving so quickly” on a windy day, Gilkey said.
Authorities feared that they would not be able to evacuate the town fast enough if they waited and the blaze spread quickly, Gilkey said.
Emergency workers ordered residents in a rural area between Ola and Birta, six miles to the east along Arkansas 10, to evacuate, sheriff’s Capt. John Foster said. That area is more sparsely populated than Ola, which has 1,271 residents.
Arkansas 10 was closed for a time. It was scheduled to reopen about 11 p.m. Wednesday, but Foster said residents were still being kept from returning home.
By midevening, the fire had burned about 400 acres and was 2 to 3 miles southeast of Ola, Gilkey said. The blaze was about 50 percent contained, he added.
Most residents along the highway section closest to the fire had left their homes, Gilkey said. But in Ola, “most are sticking it out” and not leaving, he said late Wednesday.
Deltic Timber, which has a mill along Arkansas 10 near the site where the fire started and which owns almost 450,000 acres throughout Arkansas, evacuated 100 workers from the Ola mill.
The mill was not damaged and will reopen today, spokesman Craig Douglass said.
Douglass said the company’s understanding was that the fire started when someone using a bush hog was mowing grass for the state.
Randy Ort, a spokesman for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, said the agency had a contract mower who called the district office in Russellville to say that the Yell County sheriff had told him about 10:30 or 11 a.m. not to mow any farther “under these [dry] conditions.”
“Our district office told the mower [that] if the sheriff said you can’t mow, then you can’t mow,” Ort said.
The contract worker quit mowing and “does not believe he started the fire,” Ort said.
Gilkey said the fire started on the roadside but “what caused it, we don’t know.”
The smoke could be seen as far away as Lake Maumelle near Little Rock, said Foster, who was returning to Yell County from Little Rock late Wednesday.
At one point, authorities said the blaze had crossed Arkansas 10, but Foster and Gilkey later said that report was inaccurate.
“So far, they are being able to hold it at Highway 10,” Foster said.
Meanwhile, the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management formed standby teams that were ready to assist when and if needed, spokesman Tommy Jackson said.
Authorities advised evacuees that if they couldn’t find shelter with friends or relatives elsewhere, they could go to the Two Rivers school in nearby Plainview.
School Superintendent Jim Loyd said about 50 people had sought shelter in the air-conditioned gymnasium and cafeteria. Most of them, he said, were elderly people or families with small children.
Loyd said the fire wasn’t visible from the school, about 15 miles away, because the flames were burning in the opposite direction.
Most of the evacuees appeared calm, he said. “Somepeople are just a lot more cautious” than others, he said. “I’m sure they’re hoping for the best.”
The shelter closed later in the night after residents found other accommodations, Foster said.
At the 7t Kwik Stop in Ola near Arkansas 10, cashier Vicky Landaverde said the store was staying open despite the fire.
“We’re kind of worried about it, but as long as it [the evacuation] is not mandatory,” employees are continuing to work, she said.
“We’re getting a ton of customers,” she said.
Gilkey said Deltic Timber and the U.S. Forestry Service were preparing to use bulldozers to dig 20- to 30-foot dirt lines “from the point of the initial fire to Arkansas 10 about a mile or a mile and quarter, and try to contain [the blaze] and keep it out of the city of Ola. ... Right now, the fire line [along the highway] is holding.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/26/2012