First rain and then fire chase people from their homes in North and South Carolina
When Nicole Taylor and her family moved to their new home in the South Carolina mountains six months ago, the gorgeous view of Table Rock Mountain was the clincher. She ended up with a porch-side seat to one of at least a half dozen wildfires in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Carolinas, fed by dry conditions and millions of trees that were knocked down by Hurricane Helene in 2024 and began decaying into tinderbox fuel. Taylor watched this past weekend as smoke started to rise from the ridges across Highway 11 in Pickens County. The smoke got worse Monday, and it was pouring off the mountain Tuesday when she got a text saying she was under a mandatory evacuation. So far no one has been hurt in the fires, which have burned more than 20 square miles (52 square kilometers) in mostly rugged, remote forests and the popular state park that includes Table Rock Mountain. Only a few dozen structures have been damaged. But the firefighting is slow work. Sources of water to extinguish the flames are scarce, so crews depend on building fire breaks to try to stop them in their tracks, using bulldozers, excavators and even shovels and saws to strip the land of fuel. It then becomes a waiting game, making sure embers don’t jump the break and hoping for the winds to die down or — the best relief of all — a long, soaking rain. The long wait Hurricane Helene slammed through Pickens County the Friday after Taylor moved into her dream home last September. The hurricane-force winds traveled hundreds of miles inland, smashing entire forests and destroying the electrical grid. There was more than a week of what she called “prairie life.” “We we’re like, OK, if we can make it through that, we can make it through anything. Unfortunately fire is one thing we can’t fight.” This week Taylor decamped to wait the fire out in a