Author: Claudia Gohn

Locals say it started with a bolt of lightning. After a large tree stump was struck on Double Top Mountain, a slow burn ignited on October 24. And it didn’t take long for what came to be called the Quaker Run fire to travel across both sides of the mountain, nestled against the Syria region in Madison County.

That’s when volunteers from the Madison County fire department, as well as a local bear hunting group, swung into action.

One of the first volunteers on site was Lucky Graves, a lifelong Madison resident, who lives in Syria near Graves Mountain Lodge and is a member of the Double Top Bear Hunting Club. During the past several weeks, he’s helped maintain fire lines, transported equipment, directed personnel in the rough terrain, and occasionally distributed food to those working on the mountain.

“It’s like it always is around here,” says Graves. “We stick together as a local community to try to help anybody out. So the bear hunters didn’t have any problem when I called them to come help.”

The rapid response to the Quaker Run fire, which has burned nearly 4,000 acres, is a testament to the citizens who live in this small county of 14,000 residents. Since late October, volunteers—in addition to those from the local fire department and bear hunting club—have come forward to help with everything from establishing fire lines to supplying water and food. But the response has been challenged by Madison’s limited cell phone service and internet, especially at the site of the fire. 

“There is no reliable cell phone coverage,” says Brian Gordon, Madison County’s director of emergency communications and deputy emergency coordinator. “Once you get up on the ridges, you may look like you have service and try to make a call 10 seconds later, you’ll lose it.” 

Soon after the fire began, Verizon brought in a mobile site so emergency personnel had access to cell service. The mobile site allowed the team to communicate without having to travel to an area with cell service, according to Gordon. He also says the device allowed the Virginia Department of Forestry to generate maps on site to hand out to those working on the fire.

The Virginia DOF issued a news release on October 27, stating there was a 125-acre fire located on private land that was difficult to access due to terrain. A day later, the blaze had more than tripled in size, and the DOF said it was aiming to complete a fire containment line of 650 acres.

The jump in numbers seems alarming, but this was actually a slow-burning fire, according to Cory Swift-Turner, a public information officer with the Virginia DOF. “It has been relatively low intensity,” Swift-Turner says. “And what that means is that the flames are sort of creeping along the ground, just burning up those dead leaves. The flames are not really climbing up into the trees.”

By November 3, the fire had spread to roughly 1,500 acres. At that time, Clay Jackson, director of emergency management and chairman of the Madison County Board of Supervisors, said they were working to control the fire by removing any fuel from the 1,600-acre fire line they’d set up. Jackson says volunteers collaborated with state foresters to create this line amid tough terrain, described by Graves as rocky, mountainous, and very steep.

Volunteers were critical to navigating the area. According to Graves, the biggest challenge is “the terrain and trying to get people to understand where you could go and where you couldn’t go to actually help fight the fire.” 

Jackson says the “outpouring of support” from locals in the area, who donated money, food, water, and their time, was incredible. “It’s kind of the Madison County way,” he says. “When things go sideways in Madison, it’s amazing the people that come out of the woodwork and say, ‘What can I do to help?’” 

Jerry Carpenter, another lifelong Madison resident who works for the Madison County Parks and Recreation Department, remembers spending a lot of time over the years at Graves Mountain Lodge. He says he knows so many of the people who are working on the mountain to put out the fire. “It’s like one big family, Madison is.” 

Fortunately, Graves Mountain Lodge wasn’t damaged by the blaze, which is reassuring for folks who vacation and fish there. Lodge manager Lynn Graves—brother of Lucky—says, “As long as it doesn’t jump the fire lines, [we’re] okay.”

Jackson says there will be a post-disaster meeting to assess the county’s emergency management. Among the items that must be addressed, he says, is cell phone service. “The [issue] that has been so apparent up there is the lack of cell service and any kind of internet capabilities, which was a real hindrance from the start,” he says. 

Jackson also mentions the possibility of purchasing a device that will increase cell phone service and internet reliability. “Madison County needs something like that to be able to function in a better way moving forward.” 

One thing, however, will certainly remain the same: volunteers. “I’ve been in the fire company since 2000. I’ve been working for the county since 2005. And every emergency that I’ve seen in that timeframe, we have had a large gathering of volunteers and large gathering of donations to assist us,” Gordon says. “I don’t expect that to go away anytime—it’s the type of people we find in Madison County.”

Three days after ​​Governor Glenn Youngkin declared a state of emergency due to the fire, it rained in Madison County—to the relief of both residents and volunteers. As of November 13, the voluntary evacuation near the fire has been lifted and a statement from the Virginia DOF says the blaze is roughly 40 percent contained. 

“[It’s] just like anything,” says Lucky Graves. “When you first go into something like that, you gotta get your communications, everybody get on the same page, and work together and try to take care of the situation.” 

Olympic silver medalist Claire Curzan recently announced on Instagram that she was transferring to the University of Virginia, joining a women’s swim team that has won three consecutive national championships.

In April, Curzan, who just finished her first year of collegiate swimming at Stanford University, said she’d be an “Olympic redshirt” during the 2023-24 season. (Athletes who redshirt maintain their spot on the roster, but cannot compete for the team. Olympic redshirting indicates a focus on training for the Olympics.) In July, she entered the transfer portal, officially indicating her intention to join a new team. By the end of the month, she’d committed to UVA. 

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, according to Curzan, and was influenced by her reflection on what she wanted this upcoming Olympic year. “Just knowing that I would be able to drive down to my parents whenever I wanted or they could come up and visit me, and also being a part of a really dominant swim program. I think it was just kind of a decision that I was able to make pretty quickly, and luckily things fell into place,” says the North Carolina native. 

UVA Head Coach Todd DeSorbo says the amount of transfers, both at Virginia and across the entire NCAA, has increased since the onset of COVID-19. Because the pandemic affected the NCAA season, swimmers who competed that year were granted an additional year of eligibility. DeSorbo says this fifth-year opportunity “has opened up doors a lot because a lot of people are using that fifth year to do a grad school program. And that’s been advantageous to the athletes.” 

While Curzan won’t compete for Virginia in the upcoming season, her past NCAA performance is promising. At the March women’s NCAA Division I championships, she earned 51 points—the fifth-most (three Hoos were ahead of her)—and was the meet’s 200-backstroke winner.   

Curzan’s transfer follows a resume of high-profile competition in and out of the United States. At the Tokyo Olympics, she placed 10th in the 100-meter butterfly and helped team USA earn silver by competing in prelims for the women’s 4×100-meter medley relay. Curzan was also a gold medalist at both the 2022 World Championships and the 2022 Short Course World Championships. She joins a growing list of UVA’s international performers, including Olympic medalists Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh, as well as Gretchen Walsh and Maxine Parker—all of whom also competed at this summer’s World Championships.

This won’t be the first time DeSorbo coaches Curzan. During the delayed 2020 Olympics, DeSorbo, an Olympic assistant coach, worked with her. “It’s gonna be a pretty easy and seamless transition for her because she knows me and our coaching staff already really well,” he says. “She knows our team really well.”

Curzan has already been teammates with several UVA swimmers. She swam with Alex Walsh and Douglass, as well as 2017 grad Leah Smith and Emma Weyant (now at the University of Florida), as part of Team USA during international competition. During the 2022 World Championships, she and Douglass were both on the 4×100-meter freestyle relay that won bronze. 

“It puts me at ease knowing that I’m joining a program where these girls are at such a high level that hopefully I’ll be able to rise to it. And Todd’s obviously great at cultivating excellence,” Curzan says. “So I think it’s definitely an exciting decision to make, and it eased my worries of transferring to a new program.”