Sudden oak death can be here. The virus has been detected on host plants shipped into Georgia, so it is possible that it has affected oaks here.

Other causes of death include drought (even if we are not in a current drought year, they could have declined from prior drought years) or root damage caused by nearby construction (this includes root compaction by heavy equipment even when trees apprear to be encircled in "protective" tree save fencing).

The last drought was also my first thought as we're still in the process of losing a number of large oaks around here to that.

I think it's the drought mostly. This year's been wet but we had what, 5 years or more with drought conditions. I lost an 80 footer..49 Inches across the stump..Red Oak. Almost made me sick.

How awful! I remember when I lived in Massachusetts in the 1960's and we had a blight called Dutch Elm Disease that destroyed all the Elm trees. It was so sad to see a whole species of trees completely wiped out.
About 15 years ago we were having a problem with oaks in Central Florida. I had a nice shade tree in the back yard that just suddenly lost all of it's leaves and died within a week. When it was cut down it appeared that nothing was wrong with it. My neighbor also lost his huge oak that was 5 feet in diameter and over 60 feet high, at the same time I lost mine. The rest of the oaks in our area were okay. His tree was about 150 feet away from mine. A tree that was the same age and size as my neighbors and about 20 feet from his was okay. Very strange. Hopefully this current blight will not affect all the oaks.
Rose

The only thing destroying oak trees in my area are developers!