Once ‘a monster,’ Georgia wildfires are mostly contained but still not out

More than a month after smoky haze from South Georgia wildfires drifted across the state to Atlanta, twin blazes are still burning despite being mostly contained.

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, has been 90% contained. Even so, it continues to present “serious challenges” to firefighters, the Georgia Forestry Commission said in a statement.

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 Commission’s statement noted.

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, officials said.

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.”

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.

Cason said fire experts report that flare-ups could linger for months.

“We continue to be told that it will take a named storm to fully extinguish the hot spots,” Cason added in an email to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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 has been 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 six miles north of the state line that is home to about 1,000 people.

“And then the wind shifted,” Levesque said.