Fires in Southeast Ease; West Virginia Declares Emergency
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The number of forest fires raging throughout the Southeast declined Wednesday, but a state of emergency was declared in West Virginia.
The toll in one of the region’s worst fire seasons on record neared 600,000 acres, with some states already having lost more than in all of 1985. At least four persons have died while fighting fires, three in Tennessee and one in Ohio.
Much of the woodland along the Appalachians from West Virginia into Alabama remained tinder dry, but rain moved toward Missouri, where up to 3,000 acres of the Mark Twain National Forest have burned in about 60 fires in the last week.
The worst fires have struck Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Alabama, the Carolinas, the Virginias and Pennsylvania. Large forest, grass and brush fires also were reported this week in parts of Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Missouri.
West Virginia Gov. Arch A. Moore Jr. declared a state of emergency Wednesday and ordered “the immediate cessation of any and all debris burning.”
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