On Tuesday evening, Sept. 1, the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners unanimously lifted the county’s second drought- or wildfire-inspired burn ban of 2026.
The ban, which prohibited “all open burning of yard debris, including limbs, grass and other vegetative matter” in the county’s unincorporated area, had been in effect for one month and a day, since the commissioners enacted it during a July 31 special meeting. Terms in the ban ordinance kept it in effect from Aug. 1 “until drought conditions improve(d) and the Board of Commissioners formally rescind(ed)” it.
That second burn ban declaration followed a couple of significant wildfires in the county during the last 10 days of July. One fire, which first flared in the Buie Driggers Road area, east of Brooklet, on Wednesday, July 22, burned across more than 415 acres of brushy woodland and kept Georgia Forestry Commission rangers busy for more than a week, with support also from the Bulloch County Fire Department. The Forestry Commission brought in tractor-plow units to clear firebreaks and smother blazes, as well as some small tanker-pumper trucks.
At the peak of the fire suppression effort, the GFC had a helicopter and a plane drop water for a day or two, and a plane continued to monitor the fire. The county Fire Department sent some regular fire trucks to protect nearby structures, then deployed its tanker trucks to replenish the Forestry Commission’s water supplies and spray water along roadsides.
GFC investigators reportedly traced the Buie Driggers Road fire to a lightning strike on a single tree. No injuries to residents or damage to homes was reported during that fire or a smaller, nearly eight-acre, brush fire on Cleary Road in the last week of July.
But county officials issued the burn ban as a precaution against accidental human-caused fires after a period of drought that left some areas of the county drier than others.
Widespread rainfall returned to the area soon after this latest ban was imposed.
April-May ban
Except for the effective dates, the ordinance was the same as for the county’s previous burn ban. In effect from April 22 through May 12, that first local burning restriction was motivated by a period of sustained regional drought. It followed widespread forest fires farther southeast in Georgia that scorched tens of thousands of acres and destroyed more than 100 structures in Brantley, Clinch, Echols, Wayne and Ware counties from March to mid-April.
In both cases, Bulloch County’s temporary law did not, in itself, bar controlled agricultural or forestry burns, which are regulated by the state and require permits anyway. Properly attended cooking fires in grills and fire pits were also specifically exempted from these bans.
Lifting the burn ban was not on the original agenda for the Sept. 1 meeting, which lasted three hours and was dominated by discussion of zoning items, including a proposed, now dropped, ban on zoning for data centers.
County manager Chris Eldridge had the burn ban decision added to under “new business” late in the meeting.
“It’s just per the recommendation of our fire chief. I think we’ve had enough rain, we have not been having issues, and you could rescind that this evening,” Eldridge said.
The 6-0 vote followed in less than a minute.