First rain and then fire chase people from their homes in North and South Carolina

When Nicole Taylor and her family moved to their new home in the South Carolina mountains six months ago, the gorgeous view of Table Rock Mountain was the clincher.

She ended up with a porch-side seat to one of at least a half dozen wildfires in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Carolinas, fed by dry conditions and millions of trees that were knocked down by Hurricane Helene in 2024 and began decaying into tinderbox fuel.

Taylor watched this past weekend as smoke started to rise from the ridges across Highway 11 in Pickens County. The smoke got worse Monday, and it was pouring off the mountain Tuesday when she got a text saying she was under a mandatory evacuation.

So far no one has been hurt in the fires, which have burned more than 20 square miles (52 square kilometers) in mostly rugged, remote forests and the popular state park that includes Table Rock Mountain. Only a few dozen structures have been damaged.

But the firefighting is slow work. Sources of water to extinguish the flames are scarce, so crews depend on building fire breaks to try to stop them in their tracks, using bulldozers, excavators and even shovels and saws to strip the land of fuel.

It then becomes a waiting game, making sure embers don't jump the break and hoping for the winds to die down or — the best relief of all — a long, soaking rain.

Hurricane Helene slammed through Pickens County the Friday after Taylor moved into her dream home last September. The hurricane-force winds traveled hundreds of miles inland, smashing entire forests and destroying the electrical grid.

There was more than a week of what she called “prairie life."

“We we're like, OK, if we can make it through that, we can make it through anything. Unfortunately fire is one thing we can't fight.”

This week Taylor decamped to wait the fire out in a hotel room in Greenville with her fiance, two children and their dogs. So far the fire has remained across the highway, but it is still too close for them to be able to go home.

“It's been an actual whirlwind,” Taylor said of the last several days.

Six months ago Eric Young packed up his cats and left his home in Transylvania County, North Carolina, after floods and winds from Helene knocked out power, water and cell service. On Wednesday the fires in nearby South Carolina forced them all out again.

A retired environmental educator who moved there from Long Island a few years ago, he had his car, driveway and crawl space flooded in September.

Now he is at a friend's home near Charlotte, trying to keep a sense of humor about the absurdity of floodwaters followed so soon by flames.

“I thought it was nirvana here — never get anything but severe thunderstorms, the weather is temperate, very nice,” he said. “I didn’t know I’d be gut-punched twice in six months.”

Forestry officials were worried after all those trees came down during Helene. It's not just the fuel they create, they also hinder firefighters' movement.

“It is nearly impossible to get through this stuff. We’ve got about five bulldozers, an excavator and saw crews to open this up and clean this,” Toby Cox, the firefighter in charge of the Table Rock fire, said about a fire break in a video briefing Thursday morning.

Extinguishing wildfires in the Carolinas takes time. A fire near Myrtle Beach that threatened dozens of homes and burned 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers) in early March has been out of the news for nearly four weeks, but it is still just 80% contained and sends smoke billowing over neighborhoods when the wind shifts.

Wildfires are unusual in the Carolinas, but not unheard of. The Great Fire of 1898 burned some 4,700 square miles (12,175 square kilometers) in the two states, an area roughly the size of Connecticut, said David Easterling, the director of the Technical Support Unit at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Spring is typically when blazes happen, according to Kathie Dello, North Carolina’s state climatologist.

This season the Blue Ridge Mountains are dry, having received only about two-thirds of the normal amount of rainfall in the last six months since Hurricane Helene. March has been full of sunny, dry, windy days.

Meanwhile the risk to people and property has increased over the years thanks to a boom in popularity of the mountains as a place to live.

“North Carolina has a lot of homes in the wildland urban interface, or more people living with a higher fire risk,” Dello said.

Any trees downed by Helene that do not burn this year will still be around for future fire seasons.

“All that storm debris will be there for years to come, increasing the fire danger considerably,” Easterling said.

The two large fires in South Carolina continued to burn Thursday. The Table Rock fire has consumed 7.1 square miles (18.4 square kilometers), and the one on Persimmon Ridge in Greenville County has burned 2.4 square miles (6.2 square kilometers).

The fires are about 8 miles (13 kilometers) apart, and emergency officials have asked almost everyone living between them to leave as a precaution. The evacuation zone extended into nearby Transylvania County, North Carolina.

In North Carolina at least eight fires were burning in the mountains. The largest — the Black Cove Fire and the Deep Woods Fire in Polk County — were 17% and 30% contained, respectively, after firefighters made more progress. The fires have scorched about 10 square miles (26 square kilometers) combined but have barely grown for more than a day.

The Black Cove Fire is seen Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Firefighters look at a map as the Black Cove Fire burns nearby Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A firefighter works to clear debris from Hurricane Helene to protect a home as the Black Cove Fire burns nearby Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C.. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Firefighters work to clear debris from Hurricane Helene to protect a home as the Black Cove Fire burns nearby Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Firefighters work a backburn to control the Black Cove Fire Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

The Black Cove Fire is seen Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Smoldering remains of Hurricane Helene debris that caught fire are seen during the Black Cove Fire Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C.. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A helicopter does a water drop on the Black Cove Fire Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Smoldering remains of Hurricane Helene debris that caught fire are seen during the Black Cove Fire Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

The Black Cove Fire is seen Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Firefighters look at a map as the Black Cove Fire burns nearby Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A firefighter works to control a protective backburn fire as the Black Cove Fire burns nearby Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A firefighter works to control the Black Cove Fire Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Firefighter John Ward works to control the Black Cove Fire Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A firefighter watches a helicopter as he works a backburn to control the Black Cove Fire Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Firefighters from North Carolina and across the U.S. gather for a morning coordination meeting Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Mill Spring, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A firefighter lights a protective backburn fire to control the Black Cove Fire Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Firefighter John Ward lights a backburn to control the Black Cove Fire Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Saluda, N.C.. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran has responded to a letter sent by U.S. President Donald Trump to its supreme leader in an attempt to jump-start talks over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program, rejecting the option of direct talks.

The decision by Tehran leaves open the possibility of indirect talks with Washington. However, such talks have made no progress since Trump in his first term unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.

Trump has threatened new sanctions on Iran as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign targeting the country. He also again suggested military action against Iran remained a possibility, while emphasizing he still believed a new deal could be reached.

Iran's 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday warned Iran would respond to any attack with an attack of its own.

Here's what to know about the letter, Iran's nuclear program and the overall tensions that have stalked relations between Tehran and Washington since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Trump dispatched the letter to Khamenei on March 5, then gave a television interview the next day in which he acknowledged sending it. He said: “I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.’” Since returning to the White House, the president has been pushing for talks while simultaneously ratcheting up sanctions and suggesting a military strike by Israel or the U.S. could target Iranian nuclear sites.

A previous letter from Trump during his first term drew an angry retort from the supreme leader.

But Trump’s letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term led to face-to-face meetings, though no deals to limit Pyongyang’s atomic bombs and a missile program capable of reaching the continental U.S.

On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian rejected direct negotiations with the United States over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program.

“We don’t avoid talks; it’s the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far,” Pezeshkian said in televised remarks during a Cabinet meeting. “They must prove that they can build trust.”

On Monday, Khamenei seemingly reacted to comments by Trump renewing his threat of military action.

“They threaten to commit acts of mischief, but we are not entirely certain that such actions will take place,” the supreme leader said. “We do not consider it highly likely that trouble will come from the outside. However, if it does, they will undoubtedly face a strong retaliatory strike.”

Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials increasingly threaten to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels of 60%, the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Under the original 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium only up to 3.67% purity and to maintain a uranium stockpile of 300 kilograms (661 pounds). The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s program put its stockpile at 8,294.4 kilograms (18,286 pounds) as it enriches a fraction of it to 60% purity.

U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Iran was once one of the U.S.'s top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA had fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah's rule.

But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. The Islamic Revolution followed, led by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and created Iran's theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah's extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s saw the U.S. back Saddam Hussein. The “Tanker War” during that conflict saw the U.S. launch a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea, while the U.S. later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner.

Iran and the U.S. have see-sawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, with relations peaking when Tehran made a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord, sparking years of tensions in the Mideast that persist today.

Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed.

This combo of pictures show President Donald Trump, left, addressing a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, March 4, 2025, and a handout of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attending a ceremony in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis - Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)