When wildfires were raging across South Georgia in late April, fire crews from across the state rushed to aid local crews, including firefighters from Northeast Georgia.
Fire crews from White County, Fannin County and Jackson County went to help with the Highway 82 fire in Brantley and Wayne counties, including four members of the Maysville Area Volunteer Fire Rescue Department. The fire has burned more than 22,000 acres of land as of May 22 after burning for roughly a month.
Volunteer firefighters Aiden Anglin, Zack Mabry, Heath Parker and Lance Thomason made the trip in late April to help with the fires after responding to a message from the department’s chief, Greg Wells, asking if anyone was willing to go.
“When you get a call for a state emergency, or another state (has) an emergency, and you get a chance to go, we just go,” Mabry said. “If you’re in this for the glory or fame…or just a paycheck, you’re doing it for the wrong job. You’ve got to want to help people and serve people and keep our community safe, and if it’s our brothers down in South Georgia that needs us, we go. There’s no point of arguing it, you just go.”
Thomason said when they first arrived, they didn’t see much of the active fire. What they did see, however, was the devastation the wildfire had already left in its wake.
“We just saw the smoke, and we kind of staged on the side of the road just waiting for the fire to cross over where they thought it was going to cross over,” Thomason said. “That night was when we actually got to see some of the devastation that was caused by the fire…It was a lot of houses (destroyed).”
Parker said after staging along the highway for several hours, local officials advised them to take a break and wait on another assignment. While they were doing so, he said the fire made a dramatic advancement.
“The fire jumped a mile and a half down the road from us, it jumped across the road we were at, but it jumped so hard and so fast they had to pull everybody out,” Parker said. “We got our assignment to go back out, and basically, we were saving structures that could be saved if the fire was approaching.”
Parker, however, said not all homes and structures were able to be saved.
“If the houses weren’t livable, let them go. They wanted to use their resources on houses that could be saved,” Parker said. “All night, basically, we rode around looking trying to save houses, trying to save any sort of structure that could be saved…Up until we left, that’s all that we did.”
Anglin said the level of devastation in the area left an impression on him.
“I’ve never seen nothing like that,” Anglin said. “I didn’t realize it was that bad. I knew it had been going on, but I didn’t know it was that bad until we got down there and I’m like…everything’s gone.”
Mabry echoed that statement, saying the scope of such a wildfire is hard to explain when you haven’t seen it in person.
“If the house was in the burn zone, the house was on the ground. There wasn’t no stopping it,” Mabry said. “You’re talking about 20-plus feet of fire coming over as the wind picked up, so there was nothing you could do.”
Parker said the help from roughly 15 different departments from across the state was felt in a big way by the local departments in Brantley County.
“The relief and the pleasure on the firefighters’ faces whenever they saw departments from five, six hours away showing up…because those guys are working 24 hours straight, going home for four or five hours and coming back out,” Parker said.
As of Friday, May 22, the Highway 82 fire is estimated to be over 90% contained, although still actively burning.
To hear more from the four Maysville volunteer firefighters who aided in the effort, click play on the video above.
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