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Oct. 28--Most of a wildfire that burned nearly 100 acres near Chilhowie, Va., was contained late Thursday afternoon.
The blaze began the day before, after a car fire on state Route 107 spread into the forest, said Ken Heath, the Marion Volunteer Fire Department's public information officer.
"Conditions were just right, there was dry brush and wind," he said, for the fire to spread throughout the forest.
He said firefighters had that fire under control by about 10 p.m. Wednesday. But Thursday morning, the wind picked up again, and about 30 firefighters battled the blaze between state Route 107 and Horseshoe Bend Road, all day, he said.
"We'd get a little sprinkle, and it would die down, then we'd get wind and the fire would start racing back up the mountain," Heath said.
It finally rained enough in the late afternoon to dampen the flames, he said, and the volunteer crews that had been called in -- the Marion crew, the Adwolfe Volunteer Fire Department and the Saltville Volunteer Fire Department -- were released from the fire around 4 p.m.
The Chilhowie Fire Department and firefighters with the U.S. Forest Service stayed overnight to monitor the fire.
Heath said the flames were about 3 or 4 feet high and mostly burned the underbrush and dry leaves in the forest.
"This same area burned four years ago," he said. "This was one of the bigger ones I've been on."
No homes were in the path of the blaze, Heath said, and the six houses on the edge of the fire zone had tanker trucks near them to protect them from the flames.
"We wanted to make sure those homes were protected," he said. "The winds were so unpredictable, we told folks in the neighborhood just in case we had to do an evacuation."
No one was seriously injured in the fire either, he said, but some firefighters suffered scrapes and bruises and one was burned on the end of his nose.
Part of the concern, Heath said, was the terrain -- much of the burned area was on a steep slope, and fire travels more quickly on steep ground.
"Every minute, it can double in size," he said. "It can run up the hill pretty quick."
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