WOODSTOCK, Ga. — In downtown Woodstock Thursday, Lauren McLeod says there was definitely something in the air.
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“It smelled like I was at a campfire. I felt like it was in my clothes and in my hair a little bit,” McLeod said.
And where there’s smoke, there’s fire. This fire was 15 miles away.
“It gets the fire established, and it starts bringing it into the tract,” said Ranger Tyler Tant with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
He showed Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen how he used what’s called a drip torch to help start a 350-acre prescribed burn along Allatoona Lake in Bartow County, one of seven permitted burns across north Georgia on Wednesday.
Most of them were issued to farmers clearing fields, but for the Corps it was about clearing the forest of fuel.
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Tons of fallen leaves and limbs that need to be incinerated in a timely matter. The ranger says if you let it go too long, you get trouble.
“When and if they do ignite, there’s nothing that can stop them. If you look down in south Georgia, they have wildfires that are crossing roads,” Tant said.
The Corps does not think smoke from their prescribed burn was responsible for complaints as far south as Sandy Springs in Fulton County, but they say the burns are for the greater good.
McLeod might need a little convincing.
“If they think it’s necessary, maybe it is. But it was quite a nuisance,” she said.
The prescribed burns happen every year, and go on for months. If you’re ever downwind, you’ll know.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says they always alert the public in advance.
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