<\/span>
\n <\/button><\/p>\nLocal officials estimate roughly 200 Brantley County residents have been ordered to evacuate, leaving those displaced to worry about animals left behind and whether they will have homes to return to. No deaths or injuries have been reported.<\/p>\n
While crews with bulldozers work to clear fire breaks around the burning areas, firefighters from dozens of local agencies have focused on protecting nearby homes and other structures \u2014 clearing away dry brush and using hoses and sprinklers to keep houses and yards wet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve definitely had the local fire guys out there literally hosing stuff down,\u201d said Seth Hawkins, a Georgia Forestry Commission spokesperson dispatched to the Brantley County fire.<\/p>\n
Farther to the west, Georgia\u2019s biggest fire in a sparsely populated area near the Florida state line has burned about 50 square miles (129 square kilometers), an area twice the size of Manhattan. <\/p>\n
In Florida, firefighters were battling more than 120 wildfires Friday, mostly in the state\u2019s northern half. Fire crews in Georgia responded to 31 new and relatively small blazes Thursday, the state forestry commission said.<\/p>\n
Officials say soaking rain is needed to snuff out the larger fires. Areas where the two big wildfires are burning in Georgia have a 20% to 40% chance of showers and possible thunderstorms over the weekend.<\/p>\n
That might produce enough rain to slow the big fires down, Hawkins said, but won\u2019t extinguish them. And lightning from thunderstorms could spark more fire, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to need several inches of rain, and then maybe another blast of several inches, to extinguish this thing,\u201d Hawkins said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A firefighter works the Brantley Highway 82 fire, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo\/Mike Stewart) 2026-04-24T16:01:11Z NAHUNTA, Ga. (AP) \u2014 A wildfire that has charred dozens of homes in southeast Georgia could force more evacuations at a moment\u2019s notice, officials warned Friday as fire crews helped residents hose down properties in areas… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uscnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uscnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uscnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uscnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uscnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uscnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uscnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uscnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uscnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}