3 fires under interstate bridge so far this year: Neighbors fear collapse repeat

ATLANTA, Ga. — It's no secret that homeless people are living under bridges all over the city.

Firefighters told Channel 2 Action News there is a homeless camp under the Buford Connector, and since it’s been cold lately, people have been starting fires to keep warm.

Just Thursday, Atlanta firefighters had to put out a trash fire underneath the connector.

[READ MORE: Small fire breaks out near I-85 bridge that collapsed in 2017]

Fire officials believe homeless people have unintentionally started at least three fires this year alone.

Their tents and other items have been cleared out for now, but business owners in the area said the homeless people will be back.

“If they’re trespassing, they’re trespassing. They need to get them gone,” Mark Shearon said.

Shearon is a business owner on Piedmont Road, right near the homeless camp under the Buford Connector overpass.

He said he doesn’t know what needs to be done to get them to stop lighting fires under the bridge, but he wants city officials to handle it before they have to deal with another bridge collapse, like the one Atlanta had nearly three years ago.

In March 2017, a homeless man was accused of setting a fire underneath the I-85 bridge. The fire then got out of control, because the Georgia Department of Transportation had flammable materials stored under the bridge. The bridge then collapsed.

[READ MORE: What burned under the I-85 overpass?]

“They’re underneath there burning stuff all the time. We see a little smoke on a regular basis,” Shearon said. “They have to stay warm and they have to cook, so it’s nothing new for them to be down there building a fire.”

Fire officials don’t believe anyone is starting the bridge fires on purpose. That’s why there have been no arrests as police are still investigating who started them.

Police are dealing with the homelessness issue in a different way. Officials told Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes about a task force that helped nearly 2,000 homeless people in 2019 by connecting them with services that will hopefully get them off the streets.

Shearon said they’ve got to do even more now than they did last year, because when people shut down an abandoned motel on Piedmont Road, it put more homeless people on the street.

The business owner said he’s noticing a lot of new homeless people from out of state now.

“We’ve had two in our store since they shipped them down in the last probably 8 weeks, and when they closed the hotel across the street, we had an influx of them that were, I assume, living in holes around the place,” Shearon said.

Neighbors in the area said a fence was put up to stop homeless people from going back under the bridge, but there are still holes where they can get in.

It’s a problem that police and fire officials said they’ll continue to work on.

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