The Pinelands Road fire in Clinch and Echols counties has burned more than 31,000 additional acres alongside the Brantley County complex, the Georgia Forestry Commission reports. [1] Containment lines are holding on the western flank; the eastern advance has slowed but not stopped. The fire is the second front of an emergency the paper described Friday as the Southeast burning in a drought the record has not seen in twenty-five years.

The combined acreage now puts Georgia's wildfire footprint at a scale federal command structures usually reserve for the Western fire season. The Brantley fire — separately tracked, separately ignited, separately commanded — has destroyed roughly a hundred homes and crossed the Glynn County evacuation line. [2] Clinch and Echols are less populated; the Pinelands fire has consumed mostly timber and rural pasture. The damage profile is different. The drought signature is the same.

Local emergency-management offices are running the response on shift schedules built for shorter incidents. Day-three fatigue is starting to show in dispatch rotations. The forecast through Sunday gives no significant rain. [3]

The two-fire architecture means resources have to be split before they have been replenished.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago