More than a month after smoky haze from South Georgia wildfires drifted across the state to Atlanta, twin blazes are now mostly contained but likely to burn for several more weeks.
The major wildfires have consumed an estimated 55,000 acres in four counties between Valdosta and the Atlantic coast.
The most concerning, around U.S. 82 in Brantley County, about 20 miles west of Brunswick, is 95% contained, Thomas Barrett, the Georgia Forestry Commission’s forest protection chief, wrote in an email Friday.
That blaze, known as the Highway 82 Fire, has consumed more than 22,000 acres and destroyed more than 100 residences, most of them mobile homes whose owners had no insurance. It has caused nearly $20 million in damage since it began April 20 and isn’t expected to be fully contained until June 10.
“Organic soils — including peat bogs — are burning as deep as three to five feet underground, creating persistent hot spots that are extremely difficult to extinguish,” the forestry commission explained in a written statement.
Rain in recent days has aided firefighters, but the extreme drought that helped spawn the fires persists. Dried pine needles from burned trees are falling and fueling flare-ups, according to officials.
Barrett estimated the Brantley County blaze and another large wildfire to the west will require patrols “probably into July unless we happen to get 10 to 15 inches of rain ... in the next couple of weeks.’'
All evacuations have been lifted, and those with homes to return to have done so. Brantley County is constructing a 10,000-square-foot metal building to be used as a distribution center for donated goods.
Joey Cason, the Brantley County manager, said Thursday that about 20 state forestry firefighters were “doing wrap-up work” and that the county’s volunteer firefighters were addressing the “hot spots that they can get to.”
On Friday, Brantley said that blaze would likely be patrolled and monitored by a smaller local crew of one or two people a couple times a day starting this weekend.
About 1,000 firefighters were on hand at the height of the blaze, when at least 100 fire departments from across the region sent crews.
Sixty-odd miles to the west, across the Okefenokee Swamp toward Valdosta in Clinch and Echols counties, which touch the Florida border, a separate wildfire sparked by a farmer welding a gate on April 18 is also now 95% contained.
That blaze, known as the Pineland Road Fire, has devoured some 32,000 acres of sparsely populated woodland. No permanent residences were destroyed. But the fire was no less formidable, belching 80-foot walls of flame as it roared in the Suwannoochee Creek basin.
“It was a monster,” Alan Levesque, director of emergency management in Echols County, said.
The fast-moving fire darted in different directions, and at one point early on evacuation plans were in the works for Statenville, the county seat 6 miles north of the state line that is home to about 1,000 people.
“And then the wind shifted,” Levesque said.
The flames were funneled into an ordinarily swampy inland bay about 25 miles east of I-75, where firefighters kept it in check.
“That really changed the devastation that the fire could have brought to this county,” Levesque said Tuesday.
“It’s disheartening that we’ve lost an awful lot of timberland. … But no one died and we didn’t lose any homes, and all of my residents are back in their houses. ... So there is a good side to that.”
Barrett said only one or two people are currently monitoring that fire.
Despite frequent downpours of late, local fire restrictions remain in effect. And Levesque has to remind people almost daily when they call him after thundershowers to ask if the burn ban is lifted.
“No,” he tells them, “it’s not.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with new details from the Georgia Forestry Commission.
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