Brick Church Fire
The Brick Church Fire burned 904 acres in Berkeley County, South Carolina, in 1999. It was discovered on March 30, 1999, and contained on April 3, 1999. The cause was recorded as arson/incendiarism.
- Size
- 904 acres
- Discovered
- March 30, 1999
- Contained
- April 3, 1999
- Cause
- Human
Map
The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 1,078 acres. Point of origin as reported, 32.950, -79.817.
The record
- Reported final size
- 904 acres
- Burned area mapped by MTBS
- 1,078 acres
- Discovered
- March 30, 1999, 1:00 p.m. local time
- Contained
- April 3, 1999, 6:00 p.m. local time
- Cause
- Human, Arson/incendiarism
- State
- South Carolina
- County
- Berkeley County
- Land ownership at origin
- Forest Service
- Reporting unit
- Francis Marion & Sumter National Forests
- Agency
- Forest Service
- Incident type
- Wildfire
- MTBS fire identifier
- SC3296607984419990330
- MTBS assessment
- Initial
- Fire occurrence record
- FS-351666
The three sizes are three measurements: the size the agency reported when the fire was out, the burned area MTBS drew from satellite imagery before and after, and the GIS area inside the final perimeter, unburned islands included. They rarely agree exactly.
From the incident teams’ reports
The status summaries (ICS-209 forms) the incident teams filed: 6, from March 30, 1999 to April 6, 1999. These are the teams’ own estimates, written while the incident was running, and personnel is totaled from the resources each report lists. A fact the reports leave blank is not shown, and a zero on the form is treated as blank.
- Most personnel assigned
- 55 on April 1, 1999
- Most aircraft assigned
- 1
- Cost reported by the teams
- $49,000, in 1999 dollars
- Cause on the reports
- Human
Acres reported by day
The largest rise between two days’ reports was 91 acres, on March 31, 1999.
Reported acres by day, as a table
| Day | Acres | Change from the day before |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 30, 1999 | 759 | |
| Mar 31, 1999 | 850 | +91 |
| Apr 1, 1999 | 904 | +54 |
| Apr 2, 1999 | 904 | 0 |
| Apr 5, 1999 | 904 | |
| Apr 6, 1999 | 904 | 0 |
Other large fires in South Carolina in 19997
| Fire | Acres | Start | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Impact Fire | 2,484 | Apr 11, 1999 | Human |
| Unnamed Fire | 1,948 | Mar 28, 1999 | |
| Fire 19990505 | 1,752 | Mar 12, 1999 | |
| Unnamed Fire | 1,237 | Apr 22, 1999 | |
| Fire 19990806 | 1,169 | Feb 14, 1999 | |
| Unnamed Fire | 1,059 | Mar 28, 1999 | |
| Fire 19991105 | 1,041 | Feb 22, 1999 |
Nearby
Sources
Burned areas and ignition dates from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), a program of the US Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service. Fire reports from Short, Karen C. 2022, Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014], 6th Edition, Forest Service Research Data Archive, doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6. Records before 2014 were joined by this site: a fire report to the burned area its MTBS identifier names, a perimeter to the burned area it lies in when the names or the sizes agree. Incident figures from ICS-209-PLUS: St. Denis, Lise A., Karen C. Short, Kathryn McConnell, Maxwell C. Cook, Nathan P. Mietkiewicz, Mollie Buckland and Jennifer K. Balch, 2023, All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999-2020, Scientific Data 10, 112, doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01955-0; data on figshare, doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19858927.v3, licensed CC BY 4.0. This site matched each incident to the fire by the dataset’s own links where it has them, and otherwise by name, start date, state and size, and left out figures too large to be possible for a fire of its size.