TIGER, Ga. — Thick smoke has settled over a wide area of the southern Appalachians, where dozens of uncontrolled wildfires are burning through decades of leaf litter and people breathe in tiny bits of the forest with every gulp of air.

It’s a constant reminder of the threat to many small mountain communities, where relentless drought and now persistent fires and smoke have people under duress.

“A lot of the ladies just went to tears and said this happens in other places, it doesn’t happen here,” pastor Scott Cates said as townspeople donated water, cough drops and other supplies for the firefighters at the Liberty Baptist Church in Tiger, Georgia.

Here, these fires don’t sleep. They burn through the night, through the now-desiccated tinder of deciduous forests accustomed to wet, humid summers and autumns.

“It doesn’t die down after dark,” said fire Capt. Ron Thalacker, who came from Carlsbad, New Mexico.