Personal Injury Attorney in Augusta, SC.

AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - With fire danger high across the region, South Carolina officials imposed a statewide burning ban after three days of brush blazes started straining first responders.

Gov. Henry McMaster posted on his X account Saturday night about the ban on outdoor burning.

“That means you can and will go to jail for starting a fire outdoors in South Carolina. Period,” he said.

He said first responders and firefighters across the state “are risking their lives to contain many fires.” He urged people to “pay attention to official emergency sources” and to call 911 to report any issues.

South Carolina saw at least 92 brush fires on Saturday alone, and the danger continued into Sunday.

The PeeDee region was hit worst – including a Carolina Forest fire that charred thousands of acres and doubled overnight – but the CSRA was affected, too.

The latest major local fire broke out Saturday night in North Augusta. Authorities described it as a “large brush fire next to Zaxby’s on Knox Avenue.”

Belvedere crews assisted North Augusta firefighters, with other agencies offering to cover the city if needed.

The public was urged around 10:15 p.m. to avoid the area. Crews made quick work of it, though, extinguishing the fire and leaving the scene by 11:10 p.m.

At least three other fires broke out Saturday in Aiken County:

With fires popping up across the region thanks to low relative humidity, gusty winds and dry vegetation, the South Carolina Forestry Commission on Saturday night issued a statewide burning ban until further notice. That declaration replaced a red flag alert that didn’t fully ban burning but urged caution.

The ban “state forester’s burning ban” prohibits all outdoor burning, including yard debris burning, prescribed burning and campfires in all unincorporated areas of the state.

Saturday’s blazes capped a three-day marathon of brush fires on both sides of the Savannah River.

“Much of it’s unavoidable, but a lot of it is human-caused, and a lot of that human cause involves carelessness. That’s why, you know, our message is, you know, when the weather’s like it is right now ... wind, low relative humidity, and dry ... we just ask people to postpone their burning,” said Doug Wood, director of communications for the Forestry Commission.

Wood said the agency is a proponent of controlled burns.

However, current conditions make that a risky practice.

“The dangerous conditions we’re going to see over the next few days make a good portion of the state vulnerable to fires that can spread rapidly and be difficult to control,” said South Carolina Forestry Commission Fire Chief Darryl Jones. “These kinds of spring weather patterns are what make this time of year the traditional peak of our wildfire season.”

Fires: CSRA, region in the grip of outbreak

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North Augusta will instate a 2.5-year moratorium on the construction of all new standalone apartments.

The moratorium will likely take effect at the end of February, once City Council has its second reading of the ordinance.

Barring a reverse on that final vote – unlikely, with Council’s Feb. 3 decision a unanimous one despite one member’s strong hesitations – the moratorium will halt all apartment building other than what’s been approved already or that comes as part of a larger mixed-use development.

“I want us to understand and be in control of what’s happening. Right now, not one of us can sit here and tell you exactly what land’s available for this or that,” Mayor Briton Williams said. He added a quick reference to the Oak Haven Apartments, a case where the city last spring was asked to approve site plans for more than 300 apartments on commercially zoned land.

With multi-family housing, “we incentivize everywhere,” Williams said of North Augusta’s development code, the book of rules that’s basis for all development approvals.

The moratorium, he said, “gives a lot of opportunity to really get our arms around this, where we don’t just have things pop up with a willing buyer, a willing seller – next thing you know something goes up.”

Exempted from the moratorium are the smaller multi-family builds – the duplexes and triplexes – and anything already approved in the development pipeline. Also exempt are apartments that come as part of an application for a new mixed-use project.

The narrow scope of the moratorium had local developer Jason Whingther relaying his industry's perspective.

“How many actual standalone apartment complexes have been built in the city over the last 10 years? Five years? There really, from what I can think of, haven’t been that many,” he said. “The good thing for a moratorium is, it does help the current apartment owners get their rental rates up.”

The apartment projects that have gotten the most citizen backlash, had they come to the council under the same parameters of the moratorium, would not have been affected.

The Hive at Exit 1; Riverside Village; Alidade, formerly Highland Springs; Bluegrass Place off East Buena Vista – all of these, with nearly 2,000 apartments between them, would have been exempt; they’re all mixed-use projects, with apartments just one component of them.

With “hundreds upon hundreds of apartments that are already in the pipeline,” City Administrator Jim Clifford said he didn’t expect the moratorium to drastically alter North Augusta's apartment inventory.

This was one of Councilwoman Pat Carpenter’s primary concerns, that North Augusta would lose out on the type of housing that’s often more accessible to new college graduates.

Added to that were her other concerns about landowners being “stuck” with properties that could otherwise have become something during the next couple years; and the fact that senior and age-restricted apartments are not exempt from the moratorium.

This last point gained a nod from Councilman David Buck, who said there’s some demand for senior housing in North Augusta.

The moratorium, though defining an end date of Aug. 7, 2027, is linked more to the city’s rework of its development code or its Comprehensive Plan – this due in August of 2027 – than to a specific timeframe.

It “ties us into a specific action, not necessarily a timeframe, although there is a time associated with it,” Clifford said. “But in order to have an apartment moratorium, you have to show that you’re doing something – in study if you will – to make sure that that can be incorporated in the next iteration of rules and laws.”

Advised the previous week that it wasn’t yet known whether North Augusta’s infrastructure could support the more than 460 acres of the Kellogg tract along the west side of I-520, Council this week opted to table each of the three votes associated with that tract.

Though the Kellogg tract would not have been affected by the apartment moratorium, its effect on both North Augusta’s administration and its elected council underlines the city’s reasoning for the moratorium.

“It’s our job to make sure we have the resources to support everything coming,” Councilwoman Jenafer McCauley said. “If we outgrow the growth rate, which we're on a very high growth rate, we might not have the resources available to support all the developments coming in.”

The now almost vacant Public Safety headquarters on Buena Vista Avenue played host to an outfit whose origins reach back more than 350 years, to 1670.

South Carolina State Guardsmen were packed into that tiny and dimly lit municipal courtroom, in the annex of the old headquarters, the morning of Jan. 18. There was no mission at hand; just a few jocular asides about a pending winter storm.

There was some training that day. But this was preceded by a recognition of their efforts here, of almost four months ago, after Tropical Storm Helene.

“It’s such a thankless service," said Meredith Wright, county administrator for Barnwell. She expanded on that: the help is given, things are fixed, the Guard leaves, the work is forgotten.

Which is part of why the brigade was back in North Augusta for part of the weekend. And for Col. Glenn Remsen, who leads the First Civil Support Brigade, it was a good feeling to drive in and see the lights on and no trees blocking the way.

“We were able to contribute to bringing this city back to life,” he said.

"We saw the results of your training” clearing roads, providing meals; “It made a huge impact,” North Augusta’s Todd Glover said, speaking directly to those assembled. Glover is executive director of the Municipal Association of South Carolina and previously served as North Augusta city administrator.

“The equipped are not called to service, but the called are equipped for service," he said. "When we get natural disasters, we get volunteers coming out of the woodwork. The difference between them and you, is that you sign up in times of calm.”

Glover later told Post and Courier North Augusta that when a natural disaster hits and the State Guard comes in, for many of South Carolina’s smaller towns, “chances are, they’re bringing more people than that city has on staff at all. They may be the only response in many of the areas we have."

But “even in north Augusta, it made a huge difference,” he said.

Aiken’s newly elected statehouse Rep. Charlie Hartz gave the run-down of some of the First’s contributions: more than 11,080 miles of roads cleared, support given to law enforcement. Securing infrastructure, managing traffic, damage assessments done via drone, distribution of supplies. It was a litany of work that Hartz said boosted the region’s and the state’s resolve.

Maj. Gen. Leon Lott, originally from Aiken and now commander over all the South Carolina State Guard, emphasized the coordination that's needed, both ahead of any mission and during it.

That was later echoed by both Maj. Keith Blandford and Capt. Andrew Brown, of the First Battalion, both of whom were in the thick of it last fall, meeting twice daily with North Augusta city leadership in the first days after Helene.

“When a disaster hits, it puts a whole different dynamic on local government leaders. We go from the mundane long-range planning and everything else we do to a reactionary phase,” Maj. Thomas Higgs said.

Higgs knows from experience: his other work is as Laurens County administrator.

Mobilizing the National Guard might take days, but the State Guard can be on site in hours, and having someone right away is “a tremendous relief and a weight off our shoulders” as administrators, he said. The more exigent relief is taken up by the Guardsmen, and government can re-focus on the long-range recovery.

Long-range was what the Guard had in mind for its training session on the 18th.

“All emergencies start local and end local,” Col. Remsen said. “What are we going to do to ensure that we can sustain what we did, not just this year, but 10 years down the line, 20 years down the line, or even when we hit 2150, so that this is a sustainable asset for the state?”