Georgia · Twiggs County · Fire

Sgoda Road House Fire in Twiggs County, GA: A 6-Year-Old Saw the Flames and His Mother Crawled Out

A 6-year-old boy found fire in the living room of his family’s home on the 4000 block of Sgoda Road and went to tell his mother, his grandfather Ricky Worsham said. She uses a wheelchair, the hallway was too narrow for it, and she crawled to the door. Three people were inside and none of them was hurt. The house appeared to be a total loss, and no cause had been announced Wednesday afternoon.

By Nathan Saunders Published Aug. 26, 3:44 p.m. ET 8 min read 3 escaped · no injuries · cause under investigation

Key facts

What: A house fire that left the home charred and, in WGXA’s account from the scene, an apparent total loss
Where: The 4000 block of Sgoda Road, Twiggs County, Georgia, on land belonging to Worsham Cattle Company. No street number released
When: The call reached the sheriff shortly before noon, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026
Killed: None
Injured: None. Three people were in the home and all three got out
Who was inside: A woman and two of her children. She uses a wheelchair and is an amputee
Who raised the alarm: Her 6-year-old son, who was home that morning for a doctor’s appointment
Agency: Twiggs County Sheriff’s Office — Sheriff Darren Mitchum
Cause: Under investigation. No cause announced
Family contact: The sheriff said the family can be reached at 478-957-7500
Status: Blaze brought under control. Cause investigation open as of Aug. 26

What’s in this report

What happened on Sgoda Road in Twiggs County?
How did the family get out?
What was left of the house?
How is the cause of a fire determined in Georgia?
Which agency holds the report, and how is it obtained?
What do the national figures say about fires and mobility?
What else have we reported in Twiggs County?
What don’t we know yet?
What are readers asking about the Sgoda Road fire?

What happened on Sgoda Road in Twiggs County?

Fire tore through a house in the 4000 block of Sgoda Road, in rural Twiggs County, on Wednesday morning, and the person who noticed it first was a 6-year-old boy who lives there, WGXA reported from the scene.

Twiggs County Sheriff Darren Mitchum said the call reached his office shortly before noon on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026.

The house stands on land belonging to Worsham Cattle Company. By the time crews got there the structure was burning heavily, and a woman and two of her children were already standing in the front yard.

Three people were in the home when the fire began. All three got clear of it, and Mitchum confirmed that nobody was injured.

How did the family get out?

The 6-year-old was at the house that morning because he had a doctor’s appointment. He saw fire in the living room before anyone else did and went straight to his mother.

Ricky Worsham, the woman’s father, described what happened next.

“[The 6-year-old] ran in there and told my daughter there was smoke coming out of the living room. She got in her wheelchair and rolled forward. She saw flames then, so she was just trying to get them out of the house. … The hallway is so small she can’t get the wheelchair through there, so she actually had to crawl down the hallway and out the steps.”

The woman uses a wheelchair and is an amputee. Worsham said the house is home to her and to seven of his grandchildren.

Worsham called his grandson a hero and said “he saved them because it went up pretty quick and by the time she got there, there was flames coming down the hallway.”

“We want to praise the Lord that they all got out and we ain’t worried about the house or anything,” he said.

Who was in the home, and what has been said about each
Person	What is known	Outcome
A 6-year-old boy	Home for a doctor’s appointment; saw fire in the living room and alerted his mother. Not named here	Out of the house, not hurt
His mother	A wheelchair user and an amputee; the daughter of Ricky Worsham. Crawled down a hallway too narrow for the wheelchair. Not identified	Out of the house, not hurt
A second child	Was with the mother in the front yard when crews arrived. No age or name released	Out of the house, not hurt
The house	On land belonging to Worsham Cattle Company; home to the woman and seven of Worsham’s grandchildren	Charred, one side collapsed inward, apparent total loss

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What was left of the house?

Once the flames were knocked down, the walls were blackened and one side of the building had collapsed in on itself. The house looked to be a complete loss.

Mitchum said anyone who wants to donate to the family can reach them at 478-957-7500.

Mitchum said the cause was still under investigation.

How is the cause of a fire determined in Georgia?

A cause investigation starts on the ground, with the fire service that fought the fire and the local agency that took the call.

Above that sits the Georgia Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire, whose Safety Fire Division is headed by the state fire marshal.

The state does not automatically take a fire over. O.C.G.A. § 25-2-9(a) gives the state fire marshal and that office’s employees authority to investigate the cause and origin of a fire when the Commissioner directs it, or when one of four local officials asks: the sheriff of the county, the chief of police of the jurisdiction, the district attorney of the judicial circuit, or a local fire official. In a county such as this one, the sheriff is among the officials the statute names.

Georgia statute divides fires into two named categories in the course of requiring that they be counted. O.C.G.A. § 25-2-32(b) requires that all incidents of fires, “whether accidental or incendiary,” be reported to the office of the Safety Fire Commissioner, and requires every fire department to submit incident data either by a uniform electronic reporting method or on a uniform form the Commissioner prescribes. Subsection (a) puts a duty on the state fire marshal to keep an up-to-date record of all fire losses.

None of that machinery has produced a finding here. Mitchum has said only that the cause is under investigation.

Which agency holds the report, and how is it obtained?

Any incident report the Twiggs County Sheriff’s Office generated is a record of that office. A fire department that worked the scene would separately file incident data with the state under the reporting duty above.

Access runs through the Georgia Open Records Act. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71(a)(1) states that all public records are open for personal inspection and copying except those a court order or a law specifically exempts.

The same section sets the clock. An agency must produce records responsive to a request “within a reasonable amount of time not to exceed three business days” of receiving it, and where only part of what was asked for can be located in that window, it must release within that period whatever can be found and produced.

One exemption bears on records while a cause is open. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(a)(4) withholds records of law enforcement, prosecution or regulatory agencies in a pending investigation of criminal or unlawful activity — but it expressly carves out “initial police arrest reports and initial incident reports,” which remain reachable. Whether that exemption bears on a given fire turns on whether an investigation of criminal or unlawful activity is pending, and the sheriff has described the Sgoda Road cause work only as under investigation.

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What do the national figures say about fires and mobility?

The hallway is what decided this one. The wheelchair would not fit down it, so the woman went along it on the floor and out the steps.

The U.S. Fire Administration records the human factors noted in fatal residential fires through the National Fire Incident Reporting System. In its topical report covering civilian fire fatalities in residential buildings from 2017 through 2019, physical disability was the second most common such factor, appearing in 30% of the deaths where a factor was recorded.

Being asleep ranked first at 46%. Possibly impaired by alcohol came third at 16%, and possibly intellectual disability fourth at 8%. More than one factor can be attached to a single death, so the percentages add to more than 100, and at least one human factor was recorded in only 31% of reported fatalities.

For scale, the same report put the annual toll for that period at an estimated 2,770 civilian fire deaths from about 1,900 fatal residential building fires, and counted residential buildings as 77% of all fire deaths. Bedrooms were the leading specific location, at 50%.

The Sgoda Road fire is not in those counts. Nobody died and nobody was hurt.

Earlier this month we covered a storm that brought trees down across Highway 96 near Watson Drive in Jeffersonville and left school buses unable to get through.

Everything the site is following in the county sits on the Twiggs County hub, and the wider state feed is at Fires & Rescues.

What don’t we know yet?

What started the fire, and where in the house it began — the sheriff has said only that the cause is under investigation
The woman’s name and age — she has not been identified
The ages of the other children who live in the house, and where they were at the time
Which fire departments or other agencies worked the scene alongside the sheriff’s office
Whether the state fire marshal’s office has been asked to look at cause and origin
How long crews were on the property, and whether anything else on it was damaged
The street number on Sgoda Road, and whether the house was insured
Where the family is staying

What are readers asking about the Sgoda Road fire?

What happened on Sgoda Road in Twiggs County?
A house on the 4000 block of Sgoda Road burned on the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026. Twiggs County Sheriff Darren Mitchum said the call came in shortly before noon, and that the three people who were inside all got out without injuries.

Who noticed the fire first?
A 6-year-old boy who lives in the house. He was home that morning for a doctor’s appointment, saw fire in the living room and went to tell his mother, WGXA reported.

How did the boy’s mother get out of the house?
She uses a wheelchair and is an amputee. Her father, Ricky Worsham, said she got into the wheelchair and rolled forward, saw flames and worked to get the children out. The hallway was too narrow for the wheelchair, so she crawled down it and out the steps.

Was anyone hurt in the Sgoda Road fire?
No. Sheriff Mitchum confirmed that the three people who were in the home escaped without injuries.

What happened to the house?
The house was left blackened, one side had caved in, and it appeared to be a total loss.

What caused the fire on Sgoda Road?
Sheriff Mitchum said on Aug. 26, 2026 that the cause remained under investigation. No cause had been announced as of that afternoon.

Who investigates the cause of a house fire in Georgia?
Local fire and law enforcement agencies work the scene. Under O.C.G.A. § 25-2-9, the state fire marshal and the employees of that office may investigate a fire’s cause and origin when the Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner directs it, or when the county sheriff, the chief of police for the jurisdiction, the district attorney of the judicial circuit or a local fire official requests it.

How does a member of the public obtain the incident report on a fire like this one?
Through a Georgia Open Records Act request to the agency holding the record. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71 requires agencies to produce responsive records within a reasonable amount of time not to exceed three business days, and caps copying at 10 cents per page for letter or legal size documents.

Do fire departments in Georgia have to report a fire to the state?
Yes. O.C.G.A. § 25-2-32(b) requires that all incidents of fires, whether accidental or incendiary, be reported to the office of the Safety Fire Commissioner, and requires every fire department to submit incident data by a uniform electronic reporting method or on a uniform form the Commissioner prescribes.

How did the sheriff say people could reach the family?
Sheriff Mitchum said anyone wanting to donate to the family could contact them at 478-957-7500.

Sources

About this report

Compiled by The Local Alert Georgia Staff from the named outlet linked above, from the Georgia Code sections cited, from the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire, and from the U.S. Fire Administration. The account of the fire is attributed to Twiggs County Sheriff Darren Mitchum and to Ricky Worsham. The woman and the children who were in the home are not identified here. The Local Alert is not a law enforcement agency and not a law firm. Corrections and removal requests: see our corrections policy.

Related Georgia coverage

Other incidents we are tracking across the state this week.

Highway 96 storm damage in Twiggs County — downed trees blocked school buses near Watson Drive
Twiggs County — everything we are tracking in the county
Fires and rescues across Georgia
The Georgia feed — everything we are tracking today

Georgia feed →

Reported and fact-checked as of 3:44 p.m. ET on August 26, 2026.

Every source linked here was opened and verified at that time. This report reflects what was known and confirmed at that moment and is not updated automatically as a story develops. For the current status of an active investigation, contact the agency named above.

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