March brings weather changes, prime conditions for fires to escape
Firefighters can’t predict exactly how many calls they’ll have in a given 24-hour period.
However, when seven fires spring up in a day’s time, that’s definitely more than usual, confirmed Gilmer County Fire Chief Daniel Kauffman.
That’s what happened around the county March 6-7, and four of those seven calls were brush fires, Kauffman noted.
Three brush fires followed on Monday, March 8, and four more on Friday, March 12, he added.
“The concentration of fires has gone up quite a bit and they’ve primarily been brush fires. Georgia Forestry has not been issuing burn permits, but people have continued to burn,” Kauffman said.
A fatality occurred at the scene of one of the March 8 brush fires, which spanned several acres in the Hicks Ford Road area off Gunstock Creek Road and Highway 282.
An investigation showed that TC Carringer, 73, of Ellijay, died of a cardiac event, confirmed Jerry Hensley, coroner.
Hensley said Carringer had been doing work on the property and was found by firefighters responding to the call.
‘They can be on you really quick’
The Ellijay Fire Department and Georgia Forestry fire services assisted Gilmer Fire and Rescue in fighting the recent string of brush fires.
“Our resources can get spread pretty thin when you have multiple fires going on and ambulances on medical calls,” Kauffman said.
Kris Butler, fire management officer for the Georgia Forestry Commission (GFC) region that includes Gilmer County, said the agency is responsible for all wildland fires in the state, which includes state, private and federal lands.
“Wildfires generally require an extensive amount of time and resources. Generally, our first responders need to get out and do what they can do, then release so they can be ready for another call. In cases like that, we will step in and manage the fire from that point on,” he added.
The Hicks-Ford fire started mid-Monday and the forestry fire crew called a “mop-up time” on it Tuesday afternoon, Butler said.
Ellijay Deputy Fire Chief Mike Dempsey said the city fire department was being assisted by county firefighters at a brush fire on Jeff Drive when the call for the Hicks Ford Road fire came in.
Crews also responded to another brush fire off Old Highway 5 the same day.
“It’s been pretty busy on that end,” Dempsey said. “These brush fires can easily become just as serious as a house fire. They can get up and burn houses and jump roads. They can be on you really quick.”
Check for permits first
The changing, often windy weather conditions of early March contribute to conditions in which leaf or debris pile fires can easily get out of hand.
“(We’ve had) windy conditions and a drop in humidity. Right now, we’re having some frosty mornings, which dries things out and windy conditions that dries off the ground a bit. We’ve also had humidity in the 20s, which is very low,” Kauffman said.
For much of the past week, the Georgia Forestry Commission did not issue any burn permits for Gilmer County.
“We recommend that people check with Georgia Forestry before they do any type of debris or vegetation pile burning,” Kauffman said.
As of Monday, the permits weren’t being issued due to hazardous fire conditions.
“We make that decision each day by 8 in the morning,” said Butler. “We have several weather factors that are kind of a trigger point for us to issue or not issue burn permits, (including) when our relative humidity gets below a certain point. The mixing height comes into that, as well as our wind speed.”
Weather conditions are the main factors for issuing or not issuing burn permits, but GFC staffing levels also sometimes come into play, Butler noted.
“If we’re committed on so many fires, we can’t respond to other landowners who might have escaped debris burns,” he added.
Butler said reasons for a burn permit range from small home cleanups to large-scale land clearing.
“The different classifications include land clearing for construction (of) homesites, burning to improve crops or timber production, hazard reduction burns for fuel mitigation to reduce wildfires around the home and debris burns with leaf piles and cleaning up around the yard,” he confirmed.
Burn permits can be obtained by calling Georgia Forestry’s automated hotline, 1-877-OK2-BURN, or visiting GaTrees.org online.
“Even with a permit, they should keep a water hose handy and never leave fires unattended,” Kauffman said.
Although the number of recent brush fires is high, Butler said it’s actually been a pretty mild season for wildfires thus far, thanks to the amount of rain that fell in winter.
“This is not uncommon. Here in north Georgia, we really have two fire seasons, the spring and fall, with spring generally being our most active fire season due to weather pattern changes. Sometimes we get the wind and low humidity, but we don’t get the precipitation (as much) in spring,” he added.