Saturday turned out to be a busy day for Graham County Fire and Rescue – and included personnel from the Snowbird unit, the North Carolina Forest Service, and the U.S. Forest Service.
Off-road riders from Mississippi were riding in an area known by locals as “Burma Road” some distance off the Cherohala Skyway when one of the men suffered a fatal heart attack.
The road is extremely rough and it took rescuers several hours to recover the victim, using the squad’s ATV vehicles.
The body was then taken to Townson-Smith Funeral Home in Robbinsville.
At 10:40 a.m., firefighters responded to a brush fire close to a home on Little Buffalo Creek. The fire was started by hot stove ashes being dumped near the edge of the woods. The fire was contained after burning less than an acre.
Firefighters had barely gotten clear of this fire when another was reported near the Huffman Creek Bridge in the West Buffalo community. This fire was started by a downed power line and was burning in a dense thicket of laurel bushes. It was contained after burning less than an acre.
Despite heavy rainfall Sunday night, a burn ban remained in effect at the county and state level at Wednesday's press deadline.