{"id":549826,"date":"2026-03-28T05:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T05:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/549826\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T05:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T05:16:07","slug":"worst-drought-in-10-years-fuels-north-georgia-wildfires-wsb-tv-channel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/549826\/","title":{"rendered":"Worst drought in 10 years fuels north Georgia wildfires \u2013 WSB-TV Channel 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

BARTOW COUNTY, Ga. \u2014 The risk of wildfires is very high across north Georgia. State forestry officials say the current drought is the worst in nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Near Pine Log Mountain in Bartow County, on Friday, state forest rangers rolled out a bulldozer because they needed to.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re experiencing one of the worst droughts in north Georgia that we\u2019ve had in almost a decade,\u201d said Seth Hawkins with the Georgia Forestry Commission.<\/p>\n

Severe Weather Team 2 Chief Meteorologist Brad Nitz said the drought combined with low humidity and gusty winds combine to create a high fire danger Saturday. A red flag fire warning has been issued. <\/p>\n

Channel 2 Action News followed a crew responsible for protecting 450,000 acres of woods across Bartow, Cherokee, and North Fulton counties, all of which are now at risk of burning.<\/p>\n

Statewide, 5,000 acres have already burned over the last five days. Officials say there have been more than 350 wildfires.<\/p>\n

Humidity is low, winds are high and there has been little to no rain for weeks, a recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n

TRENDING STORIES:<\/p>\n

The message to North Georgia residents is simple: don\u2019t burn leaves, don\u2019t fire up the fire pit, and don\u2019t flick cigarettes.<\/p>\n

The Forestry Commission has even stopped its own prescribed burns, which are typically used to help control wildfires.<\/p>\n

Bulldozers are being used to dig firebreaks, and brush trucks each carry 500 gallons of water, resources crews may need every drop of unless help comes from above.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou praying for rain?\u201d Channel 2\u2019s Berndt Petersen asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cPraying for rain. Of course. In like a lion, out like a lamb\u2026 hopefully we get the lion coming in, with some rain,\u201d Hawkins said.<\/p>\n

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\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARTOW COUNTY, Ga. \u2014 The risk of wildfires is very high across north Georgia. State forestry officials say…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[244773,244771,244778,244777,244772,86041,76384,49987,192,22419,244776,3729,191904,244774,79,244775,33927],"class_list":["post-549826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-baron","tag-baron_peterson","tag-barrett_peterson","tag-bartow","tag-bartow_county","tag-brad","tag-channel_2","tag-cherokee","tag-environment","tag-fulton","tag-georgia_forestry_commission","tag-local","tag-north_georgia","tag-pine_log_mountain","tag-science","tag-seth_hawkins","tag-wsbsyndication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}