Evacuees recount escape from wildfires in Brantley County

Auto mechanic William Greene started the week in Brantley County smelling a bit of smoke in the air. At the time, he didn’t think much of it.

But 24 hours later, walls of flame and noxious smoke had trapped him on state Highway 110 near Atkinson as he was attempting to drive his elderly mother from her home in the Warners Landing neighborhood to safety.

“It wasn’t no more than 100 yards from the road, and it was just this thick yellow cloud,” Greene told The Current GA. “It engulfed the truck instantly. It was pretty scary. You could hear propane tanks and stuff blowing up.”

Greene’s mother runs a local cat rescue, her son said, and didn’t want to leave the felines in danger. The two managed to drive out after a three-hour wait for roads to turn safe. Greene said he convinced her to leave only after agreeing to haul in enough cat food and supplies for the animals.

The family’s story is one of dozens among the residents of Brantley, Clinch and Echols counties who have lost their homes, or were forced to leave their property as firefighters struggle to contain the now four-day-old fires. 

As of Thursday afternoon, more than 30,000 acres remained burning as more than 20 firefighting crews and state and federal teams worked to gain control of the multiple blazes, many of which were only 10% contained. No deaths have been reported, but the Brantley fire has claimed 54 homes.

Greene, a lifelong Brantley resident, said that residents generally don’t flinch at brush fires, because controlled burns are part of their lives. These fires, however, are different, he said. 

When he was trapped in his truck amid the firelines Tuesday, he said he felt like he was on a battlefield.

“You could hear all the bulldozers out there in the woods snapping trees, but you couldn’t see what was going on. It was like a war zone,” he said.

The smoke was so thick he could not see the road well enough to turn around.

“I started seeing black smoke, and it was real close,” he said. “You could smell houses or something like that. It didn’t smell like a wood fire.”

Gale Shuman, a 70-year-old retiree who moved from Savannah to Brantley a decade ago, said she did not realize how serious the fire was until Tuesday afternoon, when she looked outside and saw her neighbor’s shed burning. 

Within 30 minutes, she said, her home was surrounded by fire trucks.

“Before I knew it, the whole surrounding area, because of the embers, ignited everywhere,” Schuman said.

Shuman, who can’t walk unaided, evacuated with her nephew to the Southside Baptist Church in Nahunta, where dozens of volunteers had set up a makeshift shelter and food bank stocked with donated supplies.

As of Thursday morning, Shuman said her house had survived the fires, but she would be staying at the church until the blazes were completely under control.

Another evacuee, Mike Edgy, spent Wednesday night in his RV after the Highway 82 fire jumped the road near his family’s property earlier that day. 

Within hours, more than 300 acres of his pine forest were burning, he said.

“The winds shifted and picked up on a dime,” Edgy said. “The next thing we knew, it was black.”

Firefighters, meanwhile, were also moving with intense speed to match the fast-moving fires, he said. 

Edgy praised the emergency workers’ dedication and bravery. Helicopters drew water from ponds on his property to dump on the flames. Edgy and his family helped direct forestry crews through the 15 miles of dirt roads on their land so that bulldozers could cut firebreaks to slow the fire’s advance.

By Thursday afternoon, however, it was unclear when the fire-fighting crews, — some of whom had been working 20 hours straight — might catch some rest. 

By 2 p.m., the winds had picked up again, the Brantley fires were flaring back to life, and the Southside Baptist Church was preparing for more evacuees.