Shenandoah National Park Is on Fire

A large wildfire that broke its containment lines and has started to spread into Shenandoah National Park is one of two large blazes that prompted Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin to declare a state of emergency on Tuesday.

Fire officials said over the weekend that the Quaker Run Fire in Madison County had breached a part of a containment line established to hem it in and was spreading into a central region of the national park. According to the latest update, the fire has spread across 2,800 acres of woodland, 670 acres of which sits within the national park.

The Virginia Department of Forestry said the wildfire was spreading due to dry conditions and high winds—"both of which are common during the ongoing fall fire season." As well as water drops from helicopters, firefighters have been removing fuel sources from the forest floor and widening containment lines, it said.

Officials said on Tuesday that additional containment lines had been completed to the northwest of the fire, where it is advancing into the Rapidan Tract, and that fire lines had been installed around structures—none of which have so far been damaged. No injuries have been reported.

At the same time, another 500-acre wildfire in the south of the state, the Tuggles Gap Fire, broke its containment lines over the weekend. The two fires "continue to pose a threat to public safety," Youngkin's office said upon announcing the state of emergency.

The governor's order allows for additional resources to be deployed, including the Virginia National Guard. While the state is experiencing normal fall fire weather, his office said, underlying drought conditions had made the wildfires "more challenging to contain."

While wildfires are common, droughts across the U.S. have exacerbated the conditions for them to spread. Experts have said that the unusually dry conditions seen in recent years, caused by climate change, had left more dry fuel on the ground, allowing for wildfires to ignite more easily and spread more rapidly.

So far this year, vast swathes of the north and eastern U.S. have been smothered in smoky fog that descended from massive wildfires in Canada, while vast blazes riding on dry conditions and spread rapidly by hurricane winds brought death and devastation to the Hawaiian island of Maui. Large fires also broke out across southwestern states during heatwaves, as well as parts of Europe, during the summer.

"Summers with more intense droughts and heat than average have always existed," Apostolos Voulgarakis, a professor of climate change at Imperial College London, who specializes in wildfires, previously told Newsweek. "But the key for explaining what is happening right now is that these naturally occurring phenomena are pushed to new extremes due to climate change, which is causing more and more destructive phenomena around the world as it unfolds."

Increased smoke had been observed over Shenandoah on Friday, prompting the cutting of power to the Big Meadows Lodge and surrounding area, which has now been closed to visitors. Exposed power lines can spark and have been known to start bush fires before.

As of Tuesday, dense smoke along the Whiteoak Canyon and Old Rag hiking trails was deemed unhealthy or very unhealthy by the National Park Service. Shenandoah National Park said the Graves Mill and Wilhite Wagon trails, as well as the Rapidan Tract, had also been closed to the public.

On Monday, emergency officials encouraged residents living to the northeast of the town of Syria, near the eastern border of the park, to evacuate "as a precaution."

Newsweek approached the Madison County Sheriff's Office, which gave the evacuation notice, via email for comment on Wednesday.

Shenandoah National Park said smoke from the fire was at its heaviest around Syria and Madison. On Tuesday, the national park banned fires on the land—including wood fires and barbecues—citing the dry ground conditions.

"We need to be able to dedicate our firefighting resources to the Quaker Run fire," Superintendent Pat Kenney of the National Park Service said. "We hope a complete fire ban will reduce the possibility of any additional fire activity."