In Georgia’s burning Brantley County, family loses two homes, saves another
NAHUNTA ― Johnny Enke paid $23,000 for the house trailer he’s called home for the last six years. Made in the 1970s, he says the mobile “redefined fixer-upper.” Enke made the updates one at a time, doing all the work himself — and was quite pleased with the results.
“It was home sweet home,” Enke said.
He used the word “was” because in a span of 15 minutes Thursday, his domicile burned to the ground. So did his son Jecie’s modular next door, consumed by what is now being called the Highway 82 wildfire, a blaze that started Monday about 3 miles from the properties in rural Brantley County near the Georgia coast.
“You see wildfires out west, in California, and think that’ll never happen here,” Jecie Enke said. “This is southeast Georgia. We got too much humidity. It rains too often. But not right now.”
The Enke homes are among the 87 lost so far in the Highway 82 fire that had grown to 7,500 acres as of late Friday. Hundreds more homes are in danger. The conflagration is centered along U.S. 82, which cuts a four-lane scar from Brunswick across South Georgia to Lake Eufaula on the Alabama border.
Along a roughly 6-mile stretch in heavily forested Brantley County, U.S. 82 is now scorched earth. Woods on both sides of the road are thick with blackened trees and smoldering underbrush.
The flames of the wildfire, considered to be just 15% contained, are too far north of U.S. 82 to be visible from the highway, although the lingering smoke hints at worst-case conditions marked by extreme drought, shifting winds and acres upon acres of pine-scented fire fuel.
An even larger fire spanning more than 30,000 acres in nearby Clinch and Echols counties was only about 10% contained but in a less-populated part of South Georgia.
Gov. Brian Kemp, who surveyed damage Friday, said the twin fires, roughly 60 miles apart and separated by the Okefenokee Swamp, are the two “most dangerous, biggest, problematic” wildfires in the United States.
Hundreds of smaller wildfires have cropped up in the past month as much of the state remains in the throes of its most extensive drought in nearly two decades. Kemp issued a state of emergency executive order earlier this week for 91 counties south of metro Atlanta. The order allows for the National Guard to be deployed to help local firefighters.
Brantley County is a tinderbox, joke locals who have embraced gallows humor. It’s a place where the “welcome to…” signs at the county line tout its national champion high school forestry team and where driving directions often include the phrase “turn just past the fire tower.”
Jecie Enke guesses it’s been eight months since the area saw a soaking rain. His soon-to-be brother-in-law, Michael Gibson, said this is the driest he and his family can remember — and the Gibsons have lived in Brantley County for generations.
Relief could be many weeks away, even as the weekend forecast calls for an inch of rain or more. Johnny Sabo, director of the Georgia Forestry Commission, estimated Friday it will take 8 to 10 inches of rain to sufficiently dampen the landscape.
In the meantime, firefighting professionals will try to steer and contain the Highway 82 blaze. On Friday, fire trucks bearing the names of Tift County, more than 70 miles to the west, patrolled the roadside looking for flare-ups. A tanker led the way, arching a stream of water into the foliage.
Earlier in the afternoon, a convoy of flatbeds towing tractors, bulldozers and disc harrows, typically used to till the soil of farm fields, rolled into the area to assist in building new fire breaks.
The crews and gear are necessary because, as local residents have learned this week, wildfires are unpredictable and difficult to suppress amid such dry conditions.
Deacon Ron Olmstead of Waynesville Missionary Baptist Church flinches in the retelling of his near-miss earlier this week. On Tuesday, as the Highway 82 wildfire built from 700 acres to 4,000 acres in a couple hours, he was busy loading his camper with all his irreplaceable possessions.
“It got within a mile of my home and then the wind shifted,” Olmstead said. “Ash was falling in my yard like snow.”
Olmstead spent Friday at his church helping receive donated items. Cases of water, meals-ready-to-eat, toiletries and clothing sat stacked around the church hall. Located about a mile east of the first trees charred by the wildfire, Waynesville Missionary Baptist has become a collection point for donations coming from Brunswick and other points along the coast.
“And stuff just keeps coming,” he said. “That’s good, because we have people in need, and potentially many more.”
Such as the Enkes, who, suddenly homeless, took shelter late Friday afternoon with a relative in nearby Nahunta. A camper, a tidy Coachmen Catalina belonging to Gibson, stood in the yard.
Gibson had been living in Johnny Enke’s home with his fiancee, Enke’s daughter Tabitha. Gibson rushed home from work in Brunswick when the evacuation order came, to help the family to safety — and move his camper, which he envisioned as a future home for himself, Tabitha and her four children.
Had Gibson not made the typical 30-minute drive in half that time, the fire would have claimed the camper, too.
On Friday the Enkes received an emailed video from a neighbor showing the devastation. Where Johnny’s home stood only a concrete slab remains. Jecie’s modular is a smoldering rubble pile. Oddly, utility sheds still stand in the backyards of their properties. So do neighbors’ homes along Lane Cemetery Road, although Jecie said at least one other was lost in the fire.
“It’s a real blow,” Gibson said. “But we’re still here. We’ll rebuild, and we’ll all rebuild together. We are blessed.”
About the Author
Adam Van Brimmer is a journalist who covers politics and Coastal Georgia news for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
