Qualla: Bugaboo Fire

Bugaboo Fire: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the morning of May 22, 2007, residents from southern Georgia to metropolitan Atlanta woke to find the sky gone wrong. A gray-brown blanket of smoke obscured the horizon, stinging eyes and burning lungs. People with asthma were rushed to hospitals. The smoke had traveled hundreds of miles from the Okefenokee Swamp, where a convergence of wildfires was rewriting the record books. What became known as the Bugaboo Fire was not a single blaze but a collision of flame and drought -- a fire complex that would burn 475,000 acres across Georgia and Florida, close major interstate highways, and send its haze drifting as far as Fort Lauderdale and Meridian, Mississippi.

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Bugaboo Fire: A Fallen Tree, A Spark

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It began on April 16, 2007, when a tree toppled onto a power line southwest of Waycross, Georgia. The timing was catastrophic. The April 2007 nor'easter and a strong high-pressure system were driving fierce winds across a landscape already parched by prolonged drought. Humidity w...

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Bugaboo Fire: Lightning Strikes Twice

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

As if the Sweat Farm Road fire were not enough, lightning struck Bugaboo Island deep in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge on May 5, igniting a second major blaze. The Bugaboo Fire -- which would not even receive its name for nearly a month -- expanded with terrifying speed....

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Bugaboo Fire: Two States Burning

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Once the fire crossed into Florida, it became the retronymed "Bugaboo Scrub fire" and combined with blazes already burning in the state. By May 16, the fire complex had grown to 120,000 acres. Six days later, it had consumed 475,000 acres across both states -- the largest fire in...

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Bugaboo Fire: A Curtain of Smoke

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The fires' reach extended far beyond the flames themselves. Thick, sooty smoke blanketed Jacksonville and the entire northeast Florida and southeast Georgia corridor for days, at times reducing visibility to under a quarter mile. Health warnings multiplied. On May 22, the smoke p...

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Bugaboo Fire: Rain at Last

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The fires burned through May and into June, defying containment efforts across two states. It took the weather that had been missing all along to finally end the siege. In late June 2007, Tropical Storm Barry swept across the region, dropping heavy, beneficial rain that soaked th...

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