The smoke has not been bad for the past couple of days, and it seems that the Cohutta Wilderness fire is winding down. They are reporting it as 87% contained this morning, with minimal fire activity. They’ve turned command over to a team from Oregon, and they are beginning to release assets back to their home base, or on to other fires. Thankfully, at least for those of us in Fannin County, they have been successful in keeping it mostly to the west of the Jacks River. If you are thinking of hunting deer over there, take a look at the link below for road closures that are still in effect.
Here’s the link to the latest information.
http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5078/
If we actually get the rain that’s forecast for this week, we can all breathe a sign of relief. It’s been so dry, it wouldn’t take much to start a fire that would burn many houses in most of our subdivisions.
The Georgia Forest Service has a program for communities called FireWise. I heard a presentation on it at a program organized by the Extension Agent in Union County and the Georgia Mountain Research Center. Those of you who are in positions of leadership in your community associations might want to take a look at it. (They will also come out on request and evaluate individual situations.) One of the things they really don’t like is leaves under the porch, especially if you are on an uphill slope, so I’ve done what they recommend and screened the porch off on the bottom, so burning leaves can’t blow under there. There are a lot of other common sense precautions. They say that working with communities in Union and Towns counties, that they’ve reduced wildfires from about 40 a year to about 6. Fannin still has about 40 a year. There is some literature explaining the program and their recommendations, which I imagine is available at the state forest service office on the old highway (Hwy 60 in Lakewood).