FARGO, Ga. — Residents of this small Clinch County town are keeping a close eye on the fire in the nearby Okefenokee Swamp at the request of the county government.

The West Mims Fire had grown to 18,551 acres Sunday, growing more than 5,000 acres from the previous day, according to a statement from the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. 

The lightning-caused fire is burning within the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia and the John M. Bethea State Forest and Osceola National Forest, both in Florida.

The county commission approved a fire watch for the Fargo area Saturday night, said Roger Metts, Clinch County Commission chairman.

“We’re just trying to protect citizens,” he said. 

The watch asks people to call authorities if they notice fire jumping roads, he said.

“I was told by the commissioner for (the Fargo district) that an evacuation could happen if the fire got to Ga. Highway 177,” he said. “Some houses would be endangered.”

Residents along Ga. 177 were advised to prepare a “go bag” of goods needed in an evacuation “purely as a precaution,” said Will Joyce, Clinch County Emergency Management Agency director. An ambulance has been stationed in the Fargo area as a precaution, Metts said.

Ga. 177 has not been closed yet, said Leland Bass, a Georgia Forestry Commission employee and public information officer for the West Mims Fire Info center.

The fire is moving around the edge of the swamp from a northerly direction, he said.

Authorities have done morning and evening overflights with helicopters and planes to map the fire’s progress, Bass said.

At last count, 184 people were fighting the blaze, with firefighters coming from as far as Texas, Florida and Kentucky, he said.

Fargo’s weather forecast for Monday calls for smoke before 11 a.m. together with patchy fog before 9 a.m, followed by sunny skies, calm winds and a high near 88, according to the National Weather Service’s Jacksonville, Fla., office.

A burn ban is in effect in the refuge, and Ga. 94 will be closed nightly from 10 p.m. until 10 a.m. from an agricultural check station on the Georgia/Florida line up to U.S. 441 in Fargo, according to the refuge.

There is “definitely a chance” smoke from the fire could reach Lowndes County, said Ricardo Humphries, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Tallahassee, Fla.

Terry Richards is senior reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times.