Wildfires abound in US Southeast, Georgia suffers record property losses

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp declared an emergency on Friday for 91 counties in his state, where authorities are battling two major wildfires that have caused record property damage as more than 120 homes and other buildings have gone up in flames.



The Highway 82 and Pineland Road fires - one sparked by a party balloon, the other by a welder's torch - are by far the fiercest among dozens of blazes ravaging the drought-stricken Georgia countryside and neighboring states of Florida, South Carolina and Alabama in recent days.



No casualties were reported in Georgia, which has borne the brunt of the wildfires. But a volunteer firefighter died on Thursday evening after suffering an unspecified medical emergency while fighting a brush fire in northern Florida, according to various news media reports.



The conflagrations were primed by a confluence of climate extremes gripping the Southeast, authorities said.



Unusually sparse rainfall this spring following heavy vegetation growth in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene last fall has created a fuel bed of drought-parched timber and brush now posing the kind of wildfire hazards more typical for the Western United States in summer.