Photo Gallery
River Trail 15K @ Burns Park — 02.02
This annual race along the scenic River Trail began and ended in North Little Rock’s Burns Park.
Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 10/9/16. A brush fire off in the distance near Roberts Mill Road that grew to 20 acres Saturday had fire crews responding again after resuming on Sunday, October 9, 2016. The only clouds visible on Sunday in Chattanooga were clouds of smoke.
Dry and windy weather continued to fan the flames of a Walden's Ridge brush fire that started Saturday, while crews in North Georgia worked to control two large forest fires there.
Hamilton County dispatchers received numerous fire calls from around the county Sunday as firefighters around the area hustled to control the steady stream of blazes.
"We are really blessed here in Chattanooga to have such a fantastic mutual aid response," Hamilton County Emergency Services spokeswoman Amy Maxwell said. "That's for the tri-state area, so units that are not responding to the scene, they are responding to the stations to take any calls from those districts."
A 20-acre fire off Roberts Mill Road, just up Walden's Ridge from the Falling Water community, found its second wind Sunday after firefighting crews dug breaks and dumped water by helicopter to contain it Saturday.
By noon Sunday the fire had jumped the breaks, and by mid-afternoon many of the 13 emergency agencies that battled flames Saturday were back on the scene. They dug more trenches to control fire on 10 more acres Sunday, for a total of 30 acres.
"It's a challenge, because of the winds, the dry terrain and the rough terrain. It is absolutely treacherous up there," Maxwell said from the parking lot of Falling Water Baptist Church as smoke rose above her in the distance. "That's the problem, is trying to get there on foot and dig those trenches. That's what's been a challenge."
Tennessee Forestry Division officials said the blaze spread from an unattended campfire.
"As you can see, this is the result of it," Maxwell said. "It doesn't take much for fires to get out of control, especially in these dry conditions and this windy weather we've continued to have."
Shortly before 8 p.m., the Tennessee Forestry Division said the fire was under control on all 30 acres.
The Chattanooga Hamilton County Air Pollution Control Bureau issued a burn ban last week due to dry conditions, and Maxwell asked people to refrain from even using portable fire pits until the burn ban is lifted.
"The problem is that this wind will pick up those embers and it will carry," she said. "If we could just get a little bit of rain in here, that would help tremendously. But if you've seen the forecast, we're not getting any in the next week or so."
No homes or structures were threatened, Maxwell said, but Roberts Mill Road remained closed to through traffic. Smoke from the blaze could be seen from miles south of the scene on U.S. Highway 27.
Drivers on U.S. 27 also could see smoke billowing from a much larger fire in Dade County, Ga., that crews have been working to contain for nearly a week.
Georgia Forestry Commission spokeswoman Wendy Burnett said the fire, which started Tuesday south of Rising Fawn on Fox Mountain, involved about 350 acres Sunday afternoon within a containment line spanning 590 acres. The cause of the fire was not known Sunday.
A log cabin and two other nonresidential structures were considered threatened by the fire, which Burnett said could burn for another week.
"The weather is going to dictate that," Burnett said. "Today was pretty bad, and we anticipate tomorrow is going to be bad as well, with high wind and Hurricane Matthew still sucking the moisture out of the air. We have low relative humidity and high winds, which is not helping our efforts at all."
She said Georgia is considering issuing burn permits on a daily and county-by-county basis.
A similarly sized fire also continued to burn Sunday in the Chattahoochee National Forest in Walker County.
"The conditions in that part of the state are ripe for wildfires right now," Burnett said.
Contact staff writer David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com or 423-757.