Homes destroyed, pets lost and precious memories burned to ashes in Georgia wildfires | CNN

It took just 30 minutes for Brytney Quinn to lose everything. On Tuesday, the mother was going through the motions of a normal day in southeast Georgia’s Brantley County: getting her children ready for school as her husband prepared for work. But around noon, multiple firetrucks and police cars swarmed their neighborhood, urging them to evacuate. A massive wildfire – believed to have been sparked by a children’s party balloon landing on a power line – was fast approaching, primed to destroy more homes than any wildfire in the state’s history. She grabbed her daughter and her pets and left the house around 12:20 p.m. Around half an hour later, she checked her surveillance cameras and saw her home in flames. “My house is gone,” Quinn said tearfully in a video she shared with CNN showing the burned remnants of her house. The Highway 82 Fire that engulfed Quinn’s home has devoured thousands of acres in south Georgia, destroying dozens of buildings and forcing hundreds to evacuate from their homes. It’s just one of several dangerous wildfires burning across Georgia and Florida, fostered by the worst spring drought conditions on record. And Quinn isn’t the only one fa