Wildfires in eastern North Carolina, Dare County (Pains Bay fire), NC, Pender County (Juniper Rd fire)

DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES DIVISION OF AIR QUALITY, TOXICS PROTECTION BRANCH Air Toxics Analytical Support Team Wildfires in Eastern North Carolina Dare County (Pains Bay Fire), NC Pender County (Juniper Rd Fire), NC May 12 -July 31, 2011 ATAST Response # 11019 1.0 Overview The Pains Bay Fire began on Thursday, May 5, 2011 and was caused by lightning in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Dare County, NC. On May 11, 2011, the NC Division of Air Quality was requested to provide air monitoring in two urban areas being affected by smoke from the fire. On May 12, members of ATAST and Washington regional office were dispatched to establish two air monitoring sites using the ATAST’ s two EBAMs (Environmental Beta Attenuation Monitors) to monitor for particles in the 2.5 micron size. These two sites were established in Washington, NC and Greenville, NC at the Washington Regional office and the Pitt County Agricultural Station, respectively. As the fire worsened and conditions necessitated, one monitor was moved from Washington, NC to Manteo, NC on May 26, 2011. The Manteo site was subsequently moved to Jacksonville, NC on June 30, 201 1 in response to two fires that began in Pender and Bladen Counties in mid-June. The Juniper Road Fire (Pender County) was started by lightning on June 19, 2011 in the Holly Shelter Game Land, Juniper Road area. The Simmons Road Fire (Bladen County) had begun on June 20, 201 1 due to lightning in the Live Oak community. Both fires were affecting air quality in the Jacksonville area and air monitoring was requested. Monitoring was discontinued in Greenville and Jacksonville as of July 31 due to: 1) the fires being contained, 2) active firefighting had been discontinued, 3) minimal fire observation crews were monitoring fire behavior, 4) the conditions were not favorable to an increase in fire activity from these fires, and 5) the 24 hour running averages for PM2.5 concentrations had been below the reference concentration for 10 consecutive days. 2.0 Monitoring PM2.5 monitoring was conducted using EBAMs that were outfitted with meteorological stations and telemetry units. The data were collected as 1 hour averages and datalogged and telemetered to the Interagency Real Time Smoke Monitoring website (http://www.airsis.com/usfs/). From this website, data was available in near real time. The 1 hour data were used to calculate midnight to midnight 24 hour averages and 24 hour running averages of the PM2.5 concentrations. These averages were then compared to the