WHITE COUNTY, Ga. — One person went to the hospital after fire broke out late Wednesday inside a single-story house on Tom Bell Road, and crews kept the flames from spreading beyond one bedroom, White County Fire Services said.
The first call came in at around 11:14 p.m. on Oct. 28. Firefighters from the Helen and Cleveland departments came in to help county crews, joined by White County EMS and deputies from the White County Sheriff’s Office.
Everyone inside had already gotten out by the time the first engine arrived. Crews went in, found the fire and knocked it down quickly, a county spokesperson said, though smoke damage throughout the house was heavy.
EMS crews looked over two residents on Tom Bell Road. One of the two was then driven south to the hospital, Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville. No update on that person’s condition has been released.
The response drew on mutual aid, the arrangement that lets the county call in the city fire departments in Helen and Cleveland when a structure fire breaks out in the unincorporated parts of White County. On this call, crews chose an interior attack, taking hose lines inside the house to reach the burning room directly instead of fighting it from the yard.
Holding a fire to a single room is the goal of that approach. Even so, smoke moved through the rest of the one-story house, and the family faces cleanup well beyond the bedroom where the fire started.
Crews stayed on Tom Bell Road for more than an hour checking for hot spots, and the last units cleared at about 1 a.m. Thursday. Investigators with the Georgia State Fire Marshal’s Office are working to determine what started the fire.
