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Prescribed burns part of prevention
Efforts ongoing March-June; smoke noticeable throughout area
burn rings caused by potasium permanganate balls injected with ethylene glycol
Burn rings are ignited with potasium permanganate balls injected with ethylene glycol that a thrown from passing helicopters. - photo by Randy C.Murray

Burn rings are ignited with potasium permanganate balls injected with ethylene glycol that a thrown from passing helicopters.
Residents in Bryan County and others living near Fort Stewart probably have noticed a little smoke recently. Bob Tanner, fire operations team leader for Fort Stewart’s Forestry Branch, said not to worry.
He said the Army deliberately conducts “prescribed burns” in specific areas from March through June and over the Christmas holidays to prevent uncontrolled wildfires. Each area is burned on a three-year cycle, he said.
“Basically, we burn for the military mission and to protect endangered species,” said Tanner as he prepared to lead a prescribed-burn meeting with key “burn bosses” in the Forestry Branch conference room. “If we don’t burn (undergrowth like brush, leaves and pine straw), and a wildfire occurs, it’ll be more destructive. Prescribed burning is part of forest management.”
Tanner said prescribed burning mitigates fires caused by lightning or tracer rounds and flares during military training. Fire Operations Chief Tony Rubine said the success of prescribed burning is indicated by Fort Stewart not having lost a day of training due to wildfires since 2000. He said wildfires have dropped from 700 a year to about 100 a year. And though the Forest Branch has burned more than 1.1 million acres through prescribed burning since that time, there have been no “time lost” accidents while burning.
Tanner said he follows a prescription checklist before each burn, which includes up-to-date information on the weather, including wind speed and direction; temperature and relative humidity; forest fuel like brush, leaves and pine straw in the prescribed area; and structures that need to be protected, such as buildings, light poles, bridges and colonies of red-cockaded woodpeckers.
“We try to take into consideration who might be most affected by the smoke,” said Tanner, pointing out there are areas near I-95 that are infrequently burned due to the risk of smoke affecting traffic on the interstate. “Any wind shift could cause a problem,” he said.

Read more in the March 13 edition of the News.

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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