What started as a car fire quickly turned into a brush fire Tuesday afternoon, Cobb County fire spokeswoman Dennell Boyd said.
It's the latest fire across North Georgia and the second within 24 hours for the county. Earlier, Cobb and Bartow fire crews fought off a brush fire along Liberty Square Drive for about three hours, Boyd said.
Three engines were sent to the fire location along Due West Road at 2 p.m., Boyd said.
As fires continued to burn through thousands of acres in the North Georgia mountains on Tuesday, Boyd said the incident highlights the exhaustive resources needed to fight what are seemingly the smallest of fires.
"It wears you out," she said. "It's hard to get to and you have to use your tank water because there are no hydrants nearby."
Cherokee and Forsyth county fire officials said their firefighters assisted with blazes this past weekend.
"We were able to give (Dade County) firefighters rest from fighting," Cherokee fire spokesman Tim Cavendar said.
Cavendar said his county has received 30 wildfire calls since Nov. 3. The county isn't under a burn ban but has asked residents to restrict burns until there is rain.
Forsyth fire spokesman Jason Shivers said his county hadn't received reports of wildfires but is under a burn ban that restricts recreational burns.
Historically dry conditions put metro Atlanta at risk in the event of local outdoor fires. Rain, while desperately needed, is not expected anytime soon, Channel 2 Action News reported.
Local fire officials said dry conditions mean even when brush fires are quickly capped — like the one that burned four to five acres in Cobb and Bartow counties overnight — they are more likely to restart.
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Authorities took roughly 175 calls about wildfires from Friday to Monday, Georgia Forestry Commission spokeswoman Wendy Burnett said. It was not immediately clear how many of those wildfires were still active by Tuesday.
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The Rough Ridge fire has burned through about 21,000 acres in the Cohutta Wilderness area of the Chattahoochee National Forest in Fannin County. It has been increasing by a few thousand acres every day, said Susie Heisey, a spokeswoman with the Southern Area Gold Team, a group helping the U.S. Forest Service get the fire under control.
“We’re expecting it to continue to grow as the fire meets our containment line,” she added.
She said crews are hoping the blaze will stop expanding so quickly after a couple of days.
A trail of smoke from the Rough Ridge fire is expected to push more toward the east than the south, Channel 2 meteorologist Brian Monahan said Tuesday.
“May see the smoke concentrated more over our eastern counties (Tuesday) afternoon,” he said. “Either way, air quality very poor again. Expect smoke to be less of an issue later Thursday into Friday before a front comes through and sends it all back south this weekend.”
Meanwhile, a fire at Rock Mountain in Rabun County has affected about 6,747 acres, the forestry commission said Tuesday. The blaze, about 10 miles north of Clayton in northeast Georgia, was 10 percent contained. About 160 firefighters were involved in efforts to fight the flames.
The wildfires are much smaller than the largest the state has seen. That designation belongs to a fire that burned more than 115,300 acres in Ware County in 2007.
Schools across the metro area have stopped outdoor activity due to the increased smoke.
Schools in Fannin County canceled outdoor recess and Gwinnett County schools are operating on a code smog schedule, according to Channel 2 Action News. Cherokee County schools were also directed to move outdoor activities inside.
