JONES COUNTY, Ga. — Usually, forests and fires don't mix.
However, rangers in the Jones County Hitchiti Experimentation Forest recommend a certain type.
“These woods here, they see a lot of prescribed fire. They get burned on a 2-3 year rotation,” Georgia Forestry Chief Ranger Marcus Beasley said.
Beasley is the Georgia Forestry Chief Ranger for Jones, Jasper, Newton, and Rockdale counties. He says these controlled burns are all for one endangered bird.
“It's what the red-cockaded woodpecker habitat needs,” he said.
However, on November 6, 2022, a fire was set that wasn't prescribed.
Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale says 60-year-old Michael Autheman broke into Joe Timberlake’s hunting cabin that sits in the Hichiti Experimental Woods.
“He had a methamphetamine problem,” Barksdale said. “At some point, he decided it would be a good idea to set a couch on fire.”
It wasn't just the couch that burned. It was the cabin and also 687 acres of federal forest, too.
“It’s probably the largest burning of land case we’ve ever seen in the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit,” Barksdale said.
Beasley said the fire burned for an entire day before it was noticed.
“Just because of the rural-ness here, it smoldered and smoked until peak burn time, and then that’s when it put up enough smoke for people to notice.”
Crews were already putting out another fire when they heard about the one started by Autheman. Beasley says the fire around the cabin burned through over 100 acres in one day.
“We started attacking it about midday, about 1 or 2 o’clock,” he said.
By the end of putting out the fire, the cabin was completely gone and the forest was affected.
“Burned back the leaf litter and the grasses. Scorched some of the trees and stuff like that,” Beasley said.
Due to the controlled burns, there wasn’t a lot of damage. The vegetation is used to it, but Beasley says it could’ve been much worse.
“Even through the night, it was burning all the way up until midnight. If it had a normal fuel load on it that had not seen prescribed burning and stuff, this fire probably would've been several thousand acres,” Beasley said.
Autheman was sentenced to 20 years and 10 years served in prison for first-degree arson.
Joe Timberlake, whose cabin was burned, says he's glad that justice was served and Michael Autheman is behind bars.