By Megan V. Williams
Wilmington, NC – The third Pender county woods fire of the spring is burning north of Hampstead today.
Forestry officials are calling it the Stag Road Fire, a blaze that started Wednesday afternoon not far from the site of the county's last fire and quickly spread into the Holly Shelter Game Land.
Rough estimates put the size of the blaze between 600 and 1000 acres, but Teresa Odom with the North Carolina Division of Forest Resources says gusty winds and marshy terrain are making it difficult to fully contain the fire.
"We've got tractors going down left and right, getting stuck in the mud. The terrain is real hard to put a line in, so a lot of the tractors are having to drop their plows."
Odom says some nearby residents left their homes last night, but so far, no structures have been damaged and no homes are threatened.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.