Smoke from blazes settles over Athens

Georgia, florida wildfires

An overnight wind shift brought a vast plume of smoke north from wildfires in south Georgia and north Florida Wednesday morning, blanketing not only Athens but most of north and central Georgia.

By late Wednesday afternoon, most of the smoke had dissipated as the wind shifted direction again.

Until Wednesday, Athens has largely escaped the mammoth clouds of drifting smoke coming from weeks of wildfires in drought-parched south Georgia and north Florida. Prevailing winds have been toward the south, carrying the smoke into Florida.

That pattern was expected to continue today, keeping the skies clear in Athens.

But it actually was coming from the big fires to the south, according to Matt Sena, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Peachtree City.

Firefighters in Georgia and Florida have been battling hundreds of wildfires over the past few weeks on both sides of the border.

The largest blaze began with a lightning strike nearly two weeks ago and has consumed more than 400 square miles in Georgia and Florida. Most of the Georgia portion of the fire has been in swampy areas in and around the Okefenokee Swamp since the fire began May 5.

The main part of the fire Wednesday was in Florida's Osceola National Forest near Lake City, Fla.

Smoke is a main component of a type of pollution called "fine particle" pollution, which the state Environmental Protection Division monitors through a network of stations across north Georgia.

Readings at the monitors spiked across north Georgia, peaking about 11 a.m. Wednesday. The densest smoke was in Walton County, according to an EPD Web site that posts hourly readings of pollutants.

By 5 p.m., however, levels were close to normal in Athens and at other monitoring sites.

Exposure to smoke and particle pollution can cause wheezing or difficulty in breathing for people with asthma or other lung conditions, according to Cindy Smith, manager of the respiratory department at St. Mary's Hospital in Athens.

It also can affect people with diabetes and heart disease, triggering heart attacks, said June Deen, a vice president of public affairs with the American Lung Association of Georgia.

But emergency rooms at St. Mary's, Athens Regional Medical Center and Walton Regional Medical Center in Monroe reported no more emergency room visits than usual Wednesday.

Officals hope nature can help

FOLKSTON - Mark Ruggiero has 400 firefighters, 56 engines, 49 bulldozers and nine helicopters under his command. And that still won't be enough to snuff out the wildfires that have shrouded the Okefenokee Swamp in smoke and flame for the past month.

His only hope is a big rainstorm just shy of a hurricane. And it could be months before that happens.

"The fire will burn in the swamp until we get a tropical depression that will drop 9 to 10 inches of rain," said Ruggiero, who has been directing firefighters headquartered at the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. "That's what it's going to take."

The worst wildfires in Georgia since the 1950s have blackened more than 600 square miles of dried-out forest and swampland in drought-stricken southeastern Georgia and northern Florida. Commercial timber losses are estimated to be at least $30 million.

Inside the swamp, it is so dry that water levels are as much as 2 feet below normal, and flames have ample fuel of gallberry, wax myrtle, palmetto and other shrubs and grasses. Thick layers of peat can smolder and burn like charcoal, even several feet beneath the ground.

In those conditions, wildfires can burn for months.

"We're hoping, praying and doing rain dances to bring that early precipitation," said Bill Whitaker, owner of the Inn at Folkston on the Okefenokee's eastern edge. "There's not a lot you can do."

But Rick Connell, a long-term fire analyst with the U.S. Forest Service, said that given the extended forecast, the area probably will not get a drenching until hurricane season peaks, perhaps between August and October or November.

The first giant fire started April 16 when a tree fell onto an electric line near Waycross. A second blaze was ignited by lightning in the swamp May 5 and rapidly spread into Florida.

The Okefenokee needs periodic fires to purge vegetation that would otherwise turn the swamp into a forest. The firefighters' main task is to keep the flames from spreading to homes and commercial timberland.

Fire officials worry that the outside help could evaporate once the summer wildfire season heats up in the West.