Two warehouses at the Georgia Ports Authority Office in Brunswick burnt to the ground Saturday afternoon.
Orange and red flames lit up the sky at about 1 p.m. Saturday.
The flames even reached Tina Hearring’s backyard.
“When I turned around, you just saw flames way, way high,” Hearring said.
The flames were so close that fire crews evacuated the neighborhood. They said it was just too dangerous.
People were temporarily evacuated from their homes, Brunswick Fire Marshall Rhett Fairfield said.
“When the fire first started, there was a lot of heat coming from it,” Fairfield said. “We did have the people move to the other side of the street.”
Fairfield said 40 to 50 firefighters from at least seven different units across Southeast Georgia pulled more than 5,000 feet of hose helped fight the fire.
“There are two warehouses on fire, there’s a third they are concentrating on now, trying to make sure that one doesn’t catch on fire,” said Curtis Foltz with the Georgia Ports Authority.
Foltz said inside the two warehouses were 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of wood products which fueled the flames.
Although the warehouses and the products are now gone, Foltz said the bigger picture is that no one was hurt.
“I can replace facilities. We can rebuild all these sites. But it’s all about the people and we’re all blessed no one was injured,” Foltz said.
Fairfield said that while they gather information and begin the investigation as to the cause of the fire, the main focus is the "safe and complete mitigation of the fire."
WJAX
