CANAAN VALLEY, W.Va. — The U.S. Forest Service has issued burning ban for the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area of the Monongahela National Forest.
Aaron Kendall is the Forest Fire Management Officer for the Monongahela National Forest and said the extremely dry conditions are part of the reason for the ban. However, it was issued for the time being for the Dolly Sods area because of the safety issues to fight a fire there. The area is a former practice bombing range for the U.S. military during World War II and therefore contains a large amount of unexploded ordnance.
According to Kendall the history of the area makes fighting a fire on that land problematic.
“That puts a restriction on how we are able to suppress any unwanted fires in there. Primarily it’s really hard to do any kind of digging to put a hand line in,” he explained.
The ban means there will be no campfires allowed in the Dolly Sods. However, for the time being the burning restriction has not been extended to the rest of the National Forest lands in the state.
“Currently we don’t have anything planned, but we are monitoring that on a daily basis to see if we will go into a wider ban of some sort,” he explained.
Another problem across the entire region is water sources which typically would be used to help battle a forest fire are low or in some cases dry which only further complicates the problem.
“That is correct. As folks are out and about, they’ll notice a lot of the normal streams that run with quite a bit of water and even some of our larger rivers in the state are either very low or completely dry,” he added.
The ban is in effect until the region receives a significant amount of rain.
Dolly Sods, which is located in parts of Tucker, Randolph and Grant counties, has 47 miles of trails and various places to camp including the Red Creek Campground.