King Bars Policy Cancellations in Georgia Counties as Fires Spread from Helene Debris

Georgia insurance commissioner John King used his statutory authority to bar property insurance policy cancellations until further notice, due to wildfires that have displaced homeowners across the state.

King’s April 23 directive bars cancellations for nonpayment of premiums in 91 of Georgia’s 159 counties, where fires this month have forced more than 200 residents to flee. Some 120 homes were destroyed, and 1,000 were under threat over the weekend, the Associated Press reported.

“In a significant number of these counties, consumers will be unable to access mailing and postal services,” King’s directive notes. “Without access to these services, residents are in no position to ensure prompt payment of their premiums.”

The order came a day after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency for the 91 counties, for at least 30 days. The declaration directs state resources be made available for local operations and equipment transportation. It also created a burn ban in the affected counties and authorizes Georgia National Guard troops to be put on active duty as needed.

After getting a look at firefighting efforts in southeast Georgia, Kemp told reporters that state officials believe 87 homes burned in rural Brantley County last week are the most destroyed by a single wildfire in the state’s history. That rapidly growing fire has scorched more than 20,000 acres, according to news reports.

“There’s no way to stop this fire,” Kemp said in an AP report. “They’re having to contain the flanks and the back of it and then, hopefully, we get a change in the weather.”

An additional 35 homes have been lost to a larger fire burning late last week in sparsely populated Clinch and Echols counties, near the Florida state line, Kemp said. That blaze has burned about 50 square miles, an area twice the size of Manhattan. The section was blamed for the death of a Florida firefighter who suffered a medical emergency while fighting the fire.

An unusually large number of wildfires are burning this spring across the Southeast, where scientists say the threat of fire has been amplified by a combination of extreme drought, gusty winds, climate change and dead trees still littering some forests after being toppled by in 2024.

“There’s a ton of old Hurricane Helene debris down in the woods,” said Seth Hawkins, a Georgia Forestry Commission spokesperson. “It’s lying around, and it’s just a tinderbox out there.”

The forestry commission estimated that Helene swept across nearly 14,000 square miles of forestland statewide, striking areas where trees are grown for paper and lumber.

In Helene’s wake, cleanup efforts were rolled out across southern Georgia. The state put up roughly $135 million to help private timberland owners remove fallen trees, and the Army Corps of Engineers hauled off millions of cubic yards of debris.

But they couldn’t get everything.

“The way Helene just threw everything down like matchsticks, there’s only so much you can do short of bulldozing everything,” Hawkins said. “There are big pockets of woods out there where people don’t walk around too much. So it just kind of gets left there.”

Top photo: The fire in Brantley County, in southeast Georgia, on Friday. (Office of Gov. Brian Kemp via AP)