CAROGA — A cemetery on North Bush Road in Caroga across from North Bush Methodist Church was scorched by a grass fire Friday afternoon but was extinguished by the Caroga and Meco volunteer fire departments before it reached the tree line. Rachel and Raymond Baker were voluntarily mowing the cemetery when Raymond’s lawnmower caught fire, setting the grass ablaze, his wife said. Andrew Lewis, a forest ranger with the state Department of Environmental Conservation who was checking for embers after the firefigthers left, said the fire call came in at 1 p.m. and the fire was out by 2:30. “We were able to stop it before it reached the trees,” he said, noting that the grass was very dry. The cemetery, which was overgrown with grass before the fire, primarily contained the graves of people who died before 1900, some of whom were born in the 1700s.
PHOTOGRAPHER:
A cemetery on North Bush Road in Caroga scorched by a grass fire Friday afternoon. (The Leader-Herald/Eric Retzlaff)
