Units from the Berrien County Fire Department and Atkinson County Fire Department responded to a tobacco barn fire at Vickers Farms in eastern Berrien County Sunday night, according to the Berrien County Fire Department’s Facebook page.
Vickers Farms is one of the few farms in South Georgia still producing tobacco and their operation is significant. Also, according to the BCFD page, two of the owners, Carlos Vickers and Bradley Vickers, are BCFD firefighters while a third owner, Lamar Vickers, is a former firefighter. Carlos Vickers is the East Berrien District fire chief.
Other responding units included Nashville and Ray City. Firefighters utilized their tankers and pumped water out of a nearby pond to fight the blaze. Once the fire was under control, firefighters removed boxes from the tobacco barn and took them to a staging area where Atkinson County units sprayed them down to extinguish any hotspots that may have remained.
The Vickers family lost a tobacco barn and part of their crop as a result of the fire. No injuries were reported.
