WAYNESVILLE — Regina Hunter smelled the smoke a week ago Monday. A few hours later, as dusk turned to twilight, she saw the glow of the flames.
The next day, as the small wildfire down the road became a raging one named for U.S. 82, the four-lane highway 2 miles south of Hunter’s property, she got word. Pack up. Get out. The wind is shifting in your direction.
For the 67-year-old Hunter, the evacuation wasn’t as simple as grabbing precious family heirlooms and important records and documents, corralling a pet and heading for safety.
Hunter is the founder and executive director of GAP House Ministries, a nonprofit on the property that assists women jailed on drug-related offenses as they transition back into society. She had 16 scared and scarred charges to shepherd out of harm’s way.
“We did it in 30 minutes,” she said Thursday from a courtyard of a Jekyll Island hotel, one of three Brunswick-area inns where GAP House Ministries residents have sheltered over the last 10 days. “Good thing, too. I haven’t been back, but I heard it got pretty close.”
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
The wildfire made it to Hunter’s doorstep, blistering the sago palm that marks the entrance to her 200-acre property along Browntown Road in rural Brantley County. Across the roadway, blackened timberlands mark the eastern edge of the 22,000-acre blaze, one of two massive wildfires in South Georgia.
Jack Whisenant, Hunter’s friend, de facto property caretaker and the county’s one-time sheriff, stayed behind. With a neighbor’s help, he kept the fire from advancing farther. They used shovels and a tractor to snuff the flames until the county fire department could arrive.
“God pushed the fire away from us,” Whisenant said.
Even now, more than a week later, crews work the charred forest less than 50 yards to the west, dousing hot spots and widening trenches for fire breaks. Fire trucks come and go in front of the Hunter property, siphoning water from a roadside pond.
The uncontained flames have moved south, but the threat remains: A 90-minute rainstorm earlier this week did little more than dampen the bone-dry landscape, and the winds continue to shift. The fire was considered 33% contained as of Thursday afternoon.
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
The so-called Highway 82 fire has destroyed about 120 structures, most of them homes. About 600 personnel were involved in fighting the fire Thursday, using five helicopters, 47 fire trucks, 30 bulldozers and 19 tractor plows.
Farther west in less-populated Clinch and Echols counties, the Pineland Road Fire has consumed more than 32,000 acres and is 38% contained. The twin fires are separated by 60 or so miles on either side of the Okefenokee Swamp.
There’s no estimate on when Hunter, her staff and the women she calls “my girls” can return to the Brantley County sanctuary she’s carved out of the countryside. They’d hoped to move back Thursday or Friday, but Browntown Road remained closed Thursday just south of Hunter’s property, with sheriff’s deputies turning away traffic.
Even so, Hunter is confident GAP House Ministries’ collection of buildings — trailers, sheds and modulars — are out of danger. Crews have plowed and trenched the wide dirt track, Murphy Road, behind her property. And she conducted a controlled burn on the broad field of wild grass that fronts Browntown Road just two weeks before the fire broke out.
“My late husband did that every year,” she said. “It’s a tradition I’ve kept up.”
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
Hunter admits she hasn’t thought much about the fire or the state of her property, consumed instead with running her program as a roadshow. She started GAP House Ministries 22 years ago, soon after one of her sons became hooked on methamphetamine.
As she researched the drug, she learned it had become the recreational drug of choice in South Georgia, particularly its most rural counties. This led her to get involved with the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, better known as DARE, as well as Mothers Against Meth.
She was drawn to the plight of women involved in drugs. Many suffer from trauma and abuse, and in her view, prison does little to rehabilitate them. She says high recidivism rates are the result — 63% to 68% of women incarcerated on drug-related offenses are rearrested within three to five years, according to studies by The Sentencing Project, a national nonprofit focused on legal reform.
Yet, for years, she faced pushback from a community ashamed of its methamphetamine problem. She is a Waynesville native, “born and raised,” but said she was shunned for her efforts with GAP House Ministries.
“They wanted help for the issues, but they didn’t want it exposed,” she said. “Meth addicts, the sores are ugly, the teeth are ugly. It’s a common thing in the rural South to just keep the elephant in the room.”
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
Hunter wouldn’t accept that mindset, and when the husband of a program volunteer got elected sheriff in 2013, attitudes shifted. Whisenant advocated for GAP House with court systems across the region, and Hunter sold judges with her no-nonsense approach. They now receive referrals from drug courts across the state, including Fulton County.
Program participants must keep their living quarters and clothes tidy. They’re allowed to smoke cigarettes but can’t buy them — they must roll them themselves. And all go to work before reintegrating into society.
Many are housekeepers at hotels owned by Atlanta-based Buckhead America Hospitality. The hotelier operates several properties in the Brunswick area, including those where GAP House has been sheltered since the evacuation.
“They’ll come here on food stamps, but they gonna get off of them and they go to work,” Hunter said.
The women, who range from teenagers to senior citizens, lived together on Hunter’s property off Browntown Road before the wildfire. Most were housed in a 12-bed, triple-wide trailer, while those closest to transitioning out lived independently in mobile homes scattered around the site. Hunter asked that program participants not be identified to protect their privacy.
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer/AJC
Pam Whisenant, Jack’s wife, is GAP House’s administrator. The couple lives in a camper on Hunter’s property.
Elsewhere on the GAP House campus, there’s a classroom building, an office, a food pantry and a laundry and clothing shed. A rowed vegetable garden is the centerpiece, producing greenery despite the drought that has fed the fire.
As a return home nears, Hunter is planning for the adjustment back. She’s been encouraged by how the program participants have handled the disruption to their routine caused by the fire. And she’s thankful her property was spared.
“It’s all that I have,” she said. “And I think we do a lot of good.”
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