Wildfire, Clinch
- When
- November 10, 2:00 PM EST to November 30, 11:59 PM EST
- Where
- Clinch forecast zone
- Injuries
- 0 direct, 1 indirect
- Reported by
- Emergency Manager
- Coordinates
- 30.915, -82.706 (the zone’s center; the record gives no point)
The Arabia Bay wildfire burned within a peat swamp for most of the month of November. The fire grew from 500 acres on Nov. 14th to 700 acres on the 15th. On the 19th, the fire was approximately 1170 acres. On the 23rd the fire had grown to 2688 acres and was about 75% contained. By the 25th, the fire was 100% contained and had reached 2710 acres in size. The fire had produced significant amounts of smoke over a large portion of southern Georgia and north Florida. This smoke and fog indirectly resulted in an injury to a Sheriff's Officer due to a traffic accident.
Heavy ash and smoke were reported near the fire, and depending on the wind regime, some days very heavy smoke impacted Atkinson and Bacon counties (north of the fire site). Smoke was the major impact from the fire as property was not threatened. There were no injuries reported to the NWS that were fire related. There were several road closures due to smoke near the fire.
The fire burned through the end of the month and into December. The NWS Jacksonville provided daily site specific fire weather forecasts, spot forecasts and ran Hysplit runs and disseminated this data to the GEMA Area Coordinator as well as created a web site for fire response officials to reference.
On Nov. 23rd, the total cost spent on fire control was $230,672. This amount does not include property damage to swampland.