While we need the wind to blow the smoke out of the area, the wind doesn’t help with containing the wildfires that are surrounding our area.
Thankfully, the winds have been calm since the overnight hours into Thursday morning in Brantley County allowing fire crews to stabilize the wildfire.
As of 10 a.m. Thursday, the fire was 15% contained and remained at about 5,000 acres with 54 structures lost.
The forecasted winds are expected to shift from southeast to an easterly flow throughout the day, with gusts close to 15 mph and sustained winds of 8-12 mph.
Brantley County Manager Joey Cason told News4JAX during an interview on The Morning Show on Thursday that “it’s all about the wind.”
“We have quite a few tractors here behind us right now that are about to be deployed. They feel like if this wind stays down this morning, that they’re going to be able to hopefully get a containment line around it,” Cason said.
But Cason warned that the winds have been picking up around 11 a.m. each morning.
“If the wind’s blowing from the south to the north, we’ve got folks that are in the line of the fire,” Cason said. “They will need to be ready to evacuate.”
The fast-moving fire threatened roughly 1,000 homes on Wednesday after destroying dozens a day earlier in the rural county that is roughly midway between Georgia’s coastal beaches and the Okefenokee Swamp.