TRIANGLE, Virginia — It’s eerily quiet Thursday at Fire Station 26 in Woodbridge, Virginia. The gear is hung up and the trucks are tucked back in their bays.
Wednesday was a different story.
Brush fires swept across Northern Virginia; dozens roared in Prince William County. Thankfully, no one was hurt and there were no reports of property damage.
However, for several hours there was a very real fear that one of the big fires could spread to I-95.
“Within a six-hour window we had a little less than 40 brushfires happening throughout the county,” Prince William County Fire Chief Tom Labelle said.
Crews chased calls across the county like a dangerous game of whack-a-mole.
“Yesterday was a little difficult because the wind kept shifting directions and its very much driven by the wind,” he said.
But the biggest fire ravaged through roughly 5 acres of Locust Shade Park in Triangle, Virginia.
WUSA9 went to see the damage. The fire broke out deep in the woods close to I-95 and we couldn’t get to it by car. So, we had to go off road.
We found fields of burned-out brush and trees. Some of the pills and branches were still smoldering. The fire seemed to jump over creeks and run up the hills.
Which was part of the problem, Labelle explained.
“So as it was going up the hill we got to a point where we knew we would have to make a decision and talk to state police about shutting down I-95,” he said.
But it didn’t come to that.
Chief LaBelle said with help from neighboring fire departments and police departments, they mapped out the fires area and contained it.
Thursday, crews came back to inspect the damage and watch hotspots. While visitors came to view the new landscape at Locust Shade.
All of the fires are under investigation, but Chief Labelle said so far none of them look like they were started on purpose.
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