South Ga. wildfires send smoke our way; local Foresters manning fire's front lines

Smoke from south Georgia wildfires filled the air in Washington this week as winds shifted and brought the smoke up the East Coast. The all-time record fires have taxed Wilkes-based Georgia Foresty personnel.

The definite haze and smell of smoke that hangs over Wilkes County this week is not coming from local fires, it's smoke from the largest wildfire in Georgia history, blowing north and west and covering most of the state.

The big fire, which started in mid- April, is not only affecting the local air quality, it's stretching local Georgia Forestry personnel to the limits as they rotate in and out of the wildfire area.

Foresters Keith Murphy, Alphonso Mercier, and John Sunday and administrator Amy Treadwell of the Georgia Forestry Commission's Wilkes County offices have been serving in 14-day shifts at the fire, along with Beth Richards, Mark Munns, and Lorenzo Lee.

Out of the 14-county district, at any given time 18 of 43 Forestry personnel are in Waycross fighting the fire.

"We've got lots of resources down there," District Forester Cliff Hargrove said. Foresters are using crawler tractors to cut firebreaks and heavy-duty firefighting trucks to surround the fire and put out hot spots in the fire.

Treadwell is serving her second stint as a finance officer in the fire zone, coming back to Wilkes County briefly to catch up on work and lead the 2007 Wilkes Relay for Life earlier this month.

John Sunday returned last week from 14 days on the fire line. "I was on a mop-up crew, driving an F-550 Type 6 fire engine, putting out hot spots on the firebreaks, making sure they didn't spark back up," he said. "But when the wind shifted and the fire got out, we'd be put on housing and structure protection. While I was there we didn't lose any houses at all."

Wildfires have burned more than 600 square miles of dry woods and swampland in southeast Georgia and north Florida, and commercial timber losses are estimated to be at least $30 million in Georgia. More than 800 firefighters from throughout Georgia and neighboring states had the fire more than 60 percent contained Monday morning, Georgia Forestry spokeswoman Susan Reisch told the Associated Press.

"We expect the fire will continue to burn intensely this week," Reisch said. "Crews will be working on extinguishing hot spots through the month, or until the next heavy rain at the earliest."

Another call went out again this week, Hargrove said, for more personnel. "We just got a call for more replacements, so some of our guys are going to have to rotate back down there again."

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