Whitfield, Murray in danger zone for fires

Published 7:27 am Friday, September 2, 2011

From just two miles away, Wendell Stover said he could view the massive Boone Ford fire in Gordon County “developing” on Monday from his front porch — worriedly.

“I could watch it, and the wind was blowing it in the opposite direction from us,” he said. “We were just praying the wind wouldn’t change.”

Stover, the pastor of both the Chatsworth and Ranger Seventh-day Adventist Churches, said he and his wife live on a few acres and have three horses.

“That’s what we were worried about, we’re surrounded by pastures,” he said. “We could watch it burning and developing. From Boone Ford Road you can identify the burned area easily — it’s all blackened.”

Vicky Edge, the chief ranger with the Georgia Forestry Commission offices in Gordon and Murray counties, said personnel with the commission were “licking our wounds” on Wednesday morning as they got a brief respite from the three-day fire southeast of Calhoun.

“We are doing good,” she said of the blaze that began on Monday, reportedly from a spark generated while a man was bush hogging. “We’re doing some mopping up this morning, just hot spots and around the edges … we’ve got a little cloud cover, so we’re kind of licking our wounds this morning. This afternoon when the sun pops out, that’s probably going to tell the tale.”

Edge sent out a fire danger rating on Wednesday showing Whitfield and Murray among counties with the highest risk of fire in the state. She said the conditions are right for a blaze to kick up anywhere.

“The dirt is just so dusty,” she noted. “Everybody knows that when you go out in the yard it’s like ‘Pigpen’ (of Charlie Brown fame, who perpetually walks in a cloud of dust).”

Edge said Whitfield, Gordon and Murray counties are “about maxed out” on the scale used to measure dryness.

“We can’t hardly go any higher,” she said of the “fire danger indicator” the commission is using. “The drought index has reached the 745 level in the last week, with terrain considered almost ‘desert dry.’ The index only goes to 800, meaning there is no moisture in the top eight inches of soil.”

Edge said the area has had three lightning fires and a railroad fire, with the Boone Ford blaze being the second recent “machine-caused” fire.

“When fires start from non-human causes, it is a reflection of the dryness of the fuels and the ground,” she said.

Ranger One Ken Poteet of the commission in Whitfield and Catoosa counties said conditions are getting “extreme.”

“It’s starting to pick up in the whole northern part of the state,” he said of calls coming into the office. “Conditions are getting to the extreme fire danger stage. We have days that we rate from Class 1 to 5 — with 5 being the extreme fire danger — and we’re hitting the 4 and 5 class days. We’re going to be in that situation until we get significant rainfall. Plus, the last week or so we’re had lower humidity, so when you get as dry as it is and the lower humidity, that’s when things can turn into like what they had in Gordon County.”

‘Have to get a burn permit’

Reached on Wednesday, Murray County Fire Chief Dwayne Bain said his men were on the scene of a brush fire.

“We’ve got one going on right now, a little two-acre fire on Brackett Ridge Road, but they’ve got it under control,” he reported. “We’ve been lucky. Other than a report of a little roadside fire that was out before we got there, we’ve not had anything to amount to anything yet. We’ve been real fortunate. Hopefully people are using common sense and not burning, period.”

Are county residents aware they need to get a burn permit?

“We run into it every day,” he said of the opposite being true. “Every time we go out you get the people, you know (who say), ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ Well, yeah, right. Or, ‘I didn’t know you couldn’t burn garbage in a barrel.’ It’s only been Georgia code since 1950-something that you can’t burn garbage. We give them the benefit of the doubt the first time, warn them and they put it out. It needs to be emphasized that people have to get a burn permit through Georgia Forestry.”

Carl Collins, chief of the Whitfield County Fire Department, said the current dry conditions are part of a pattern.

“For the last three or four years it’s been pretty dry through the summer and all, but we’ve been fortunate,” he said. “We’ve had a few fires, but haven’t had any big ones, fortunately. I think people here are more conscious, as a whole, about not burning in this type weather. We’ll get a call every now and then about an illegal burn and go out and put it out and explain to them that it’s against the law to do that. Most people cooperate with you pretty good when you explain it to them.”

Collins said 10 county firefighters were “released” from the Boone Ford fire early Monday evening where they’d taken two trucks with water and equipment.

The forecast

Patrick Core, the chief meteorologist with WDEF-News 12 in Chattanooga, said this weekend may provide some critical relief.

“I just looked at Labor Day weekend, watching the possible tropical system in the Gulf of Mexico, and that holds the key to a change of weather that we may or may not have depending on the direction that ‘low’ (weather system) takes,” he said at midweek. “There is some hope.”

Core said to keep an eye on the storm this weekend.

“It’s expected to develop Friday, Saturday or Sunday,” he said. “If it moves north, it could break this — some of the driest late summer weather we’ve had in recorded history. We’re on record that this is the driest month ever recorded at the (Chattanooga) airport, one-hundredth of an inch of rain (in August). This (potential storm) is the best outlook to show some great relief in several weeks. It will be 100 percent rain or move to our west. The track of this low will determine whether our drought is broken, and whether your fire danger is broken. We could see several inches of rain.”

But what if that front fails to make it here?

“Look to the west for fronts, but September is a fairly dry month climatologically,” he pointed out. “Your best bet of getting out of the mini-drought or getting out of fire danger is a tropical system. If we do not see this move in and give us much-needed rain, then we will have to wait another several days to hopefully see something come in from the north and west.”

Core said if the “track” of the storm in the Gulf comes through Alabama it could provide plenty of rain for the area, but if it veers toward Louisiana and Texas there will be no relief.

He said Hurricane Katia, currently brushing the Caribbean, will likely not hit the Eastern seaboard, but he does have his eye on another storm that could start “stewing” in the Gulf of Mexico.

“What I’m looking at is something that hasn’t formed. It’s a tropical wave now in the western Caribbean that’s going to be moving over the Yucatan (Peninsula) over the next day or so and then kinda start stewing over the Gulf,” he reported. “If that does form and move northward, that is going to be our best bet.”

Edge noted the absence of even seasonal thunderstorms recently that could provide a bit of relief.

“We haven’t had the afternoon thundershowers and that’s what the problem is — the air’s just so dry,” she said. “The high pressure has just sunk in.”

The Weather Channel (www.weather.com) reported on Thursday the chances of rain for the Dalton area are just 10 percent through Sunday, then 40 percent on Monday and 40 percent on Tuesday. Then it’s back to 10 percent for Wednesday, 20 percent on Thursday, with a jump to 60 percent on both Friday and Saturday of next week.

Getting a burn permit required by law

Georgia Forestry Commission rangers remind residents that getting a permit to burn materials is required by law throughout the state.

“We have different rules per county,” said Chief Ranger Vicky Edge with the Georgia Forestry Commission. “In Murray County, we can still allow burning on top of the ground … but right now, we look at the weather and know that it’s too dry to burn. Just a spark off a bush hog can start a fire. For the most part, we’re not issuing any burn permits in Murray.”

Ken Poteet, a Ranger One with Whitfield and Catoosa counties, said permits were cut last weekend due to higher breezes off Hurricane Irene.

“We’re issuing permits at this point in time for acreage burns and normal yard maintenance,” he said.

An automated system can be used to get a permit by calling 877-652-2876. The Whitfield/Catoosa office number is (706) 272-2943 and the Murray/Gordon office number is (706) 624-1432. For information on the Internet, go to www.gfc.state.ga.us.