Meet the Cataula volunteer firefighters who helped fight wildfires in Georgia
As wildfires swept through south Georgia last month, volunteer firefighters from Cataula in Harris County drove six and a half hours with a fire engine and a tanker truck to help fight the fires that ravaged forests and homes.
Cataula Fire Chief Paul Price, his son Hunter Price and Tim Ryan are volunteer firefighters with the Cataula Fire Department and responded to the wildfire around April 28-30.
Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency April 22 for 91 counties due to the wildfires burning over 21,000 acres.
“When a person loses a house, that’s terrible,” Ryan said, “But these people lost everything.”
The men said homes, vehicles, sheds, swing sets and even pools were burned. They said people living there have nothing to go back to.
Paul Price said the fire left metal warped and melted.
“This fire was like a blowtorch coming through there,” he said.
Pine trees 100 feet tall — and their underground root system — were burned from top to bottom, according to Paul Price.
“It was a rural area, but you’d go five miles, and you’d see five or six homes burned,” Paul Price said. Approximately 130 homes burned in the fire, according to Price.
Despite the destruction around them, Price said, the residents were “the most friendly people down there you could ever see.”
He said the Baptist Association washed their clothes, let them take showers in their portable units and fed them, and the group slept on cots in an unfinished church.
When asked how it felt to fight the fire with his son, Paul Price said, “I was nervous because I didn’t know what we were going into.”
While there, the men found out one firefighter suffered steam burns and had to be airlifted to Augusta. Ryan said the man was released from the hospital later that day.
Ryan and Hunter Price were on fire watch and patrolled areas with houses. Paul Price took the department’s 3,000-gallon tanker truck and was topping off “hot shots,” which he described as four-wheel-drive vehicles that could go where regular fire trucks couldn’t go.
Why did they help?
When asked why they decided to help with the wildfires over six hours away, Paul Price said, “That’s what we’re here for.”
“We volunteer to help the community, not just Harris County,” Paul Price said.
Paul Price said it was hard for the group not to go, knowing they had the equipment to protect someone or save somebody’s house.
Hunter Price, a registered nurse, took off work without pay for a few days to help.
When asked what drives him to help people as an RN and a firefighter, he said, “I’m just trying to live like Jesus does.”
Hunter Price said it’s something he feels called to do.
Brotherhood
While helping to fight the wildfires, Ryan said, the group worked with career firefighters and other volunteers. They got along perfectly, he said.
“It is a brotherhood,” Ryan said.
The group said firefighters from around Georgia were helping to fight the fires along with firefighters from other states, such as Utah, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Idaho and West Virginia.
Ryan is retired but still volunteers as a firefighter. He got into firefighting through his brother and father, who were also firefighters.
Ryan said he has been in the volunteer service for about 43 years in different states.
“I tried to retire last September,” he said. “I lasted two months, and I came back because I missed it so much.”
Carl McCluskey is also a volunteer firefighter with the Cataula Fire Department after retiring from Columbus Fire & EMS. McCluskey, along with another person, met Ryan and Hunter Price to help them drive the fire engine back from the fires as they became too tired on the trip back.
“You’re retired, but you still hear the sirens,” McCluskey said. “You’re trying to help somebody. Even if you’re off duty, you’re traveling somewhere, you see a wreck or something, we’re always first to pull over — anything we can do to help out.”
The volunteer firefighters from Cataula were joined by volunteer firefighters Jessy Brazel and Dustin Weicher from the Antioch Fire Department, according to Paul Price.
