On The Ground With A Crew Fighting Georgia’s Largest Fire
Stephannie Stokes / WABE
Jeremy Willoughby is with a crew contracted by the National Forest Service. They’re on the side of a gravel road in the Cohutta Wilderness, where the largest wildfire in Georgia is burning.
They’re spraying water onto soil that’s covered in ash, which Willoughby said is the char from them intentionally burning the ground cover.
“So what we want to do is grid this where we burned out up to a hundred feet, eliminating any heat, putting water on it and mixing it up,” Willoughby said.
Their task — dousing any heat in the ground with water — is called “mopping up,” and it’s something Willoughby said he does a lot. He even scribbled “mopshots” on his hard hat.
“I’ve named our team the mopshots,” Willoughby said. “You know, they have the hotshots who do a direct attack on the fire. Then, we come in behind them and put out the hot spots.”
It’s a firefighter joke.
The people working on this fire come from around the country. Willoughby’s crew is based in the Tallahassee area. He’s been doing this for 15 years, and it’s his first fire at home on the East Coast.
“I’m usually a couple thousand miles away,” Willoughby said. “Most of my fire experience is in the West, California and Idaho.”
He appreciates being close by for once, since he usually has to drive to the places where he’s putting out fires. Forest fires in every region are different, Willoughby said.
In the Cohutta Wilderness, the fire started by lightning a month ago and has since grown to more than 27,000 acres.
Willoughby said, at this point, the main goal is just to make sure the fire doesn’t go beyond here, out of federal lands.
The forest service isn’t necessarily trying to put it out, because the wilderness could use the fire. It’s been 30 years since it had one.
“You just kind of let the fire do its thing,” Willoughby said. “We keep it in check along the boundaries. That’s kind of what we’re doing – letting it clean the forest up and the forest will love you for it.”
The fire clears the way for healthier growth, Willoughby’s crew said. In an ideal world, it would burn once every eight years or so.
The key is that there aren’t really any homes or structures at risk here. That allows them to take a different approach in the Cohutta Wilderness than they might an hour east in Rabun County.
The Rock Mountain Fire there has grown to more than 8,000 acres. And the area around it is too populated for firefighters to let it burn.
Willoughby’s crew in the Cohutta Wilderness said they’re gaining new experience fighting the rare Southeastern fire.
For one, they’ve learned a leaf blower can be effective in combating North Georgia blazes. That’s because dry leaves have been largely carrying the fire here.
“This is the first time I’ve fought a fire with a leaf blower,” Willoughby said, “which worked really well. It’s new to me.”
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