Firefighters in Floyd County, like their counterparts in extreme South Georgia, found wildfires keeping them busy Monday as a drought continues to aggravate dry conditions in wooded areas throughout the state.
In southern Floyd County on Monday morning, a fire burned dozens of acres, drawing the attention of both local and state firefighters.
Rome firefighters were called to the woods fire that burned about 70 acres off Powell Road just after 6 a.m., according to fire department reports, and personnel remained at the scene for about three hours.
That fire was the result of a controlled burn that got out of hand, Rome Fire Department Deputy Chief Benny Bohannon said.
Then the fire department was called to a woods fire on Black’s Bluff Road at about 4 p.m. to deal with a blaze that burned several acres, he said. The cause of that fire was not known.
No structure fires or injuries were reported in either of the blazes, Bohannon said, and teams from the Georgia Forestry Commission were called to both scenes to cut breaks around the flames.
Those fires come on the heels of a weekend woods blaze off Hicks Drive that covered North Broad with a haze of smoke Sunday afternoon. Firefighters were called to the roughly five-acre blaze, located behind the railroad tracks off Hicks Drive, at about 4:15 p.m.
Meanwhile, firefighters in Southeast Georgia used bulldozers Monday to widen firebreaks that were protecting a small community from a wildfire that had blackened more than 86 square miles of forest.
The fire, started April 16 by a fallen power line that ignited tinder-dry trees near the sprawling Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, was about 45 percent contained after burning some 55,600 acres about 10 miles southwest of Waycross. Eighteen homes have been destroyed in that fire, officials said. During the weekend, smoke from the blaze extended north as far as Chattanooga, Tenn.
Authorities say drought conditions are to blame for the rise of wildfires throughout the state.
Brian Fuchs, a climatologist for the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb., said drought conditions are being felt across 41 percent of the southeastern U.S. — mostly in Alabama, Florida and Georgia.
The South still hasn’t recovered from an unusually dry spring last year, Fuchs said. A quiet hurricane season failed to deliver dousing tropical rains last summer and fall, and winter El Nino conditions in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t produce nearly as much rainfall as expected.
Locally, some relief from the drought could come Thursday, or possibly earlier, according to National Weather Service forecasts.
There is a chance of showers today and Wednesday and showers are likely all day and night Thursday, according to forecasts.
