Weather, Storms & Hurricane Blog

Kersten and I were just hanging around the house having a lazy Saturday, when I looked out the back kitchen window to see a large plume of dark black smoke. I first thought maybe there was a house or structure on fire with all the thick black smoke. So, Kersten and I jumped into the car and headed for the fire scene. I already had my camera gear on standby for possible storms today, so I was all set. Once we were in sight of the fire I could see that it was a large brush fire moving kind of fast in the breezy conditions.

The fire was behind the Pier II Motel along S.R 98 /411 and along the Lake Okeechobee rim. The fire was burning in dried up marsh and saw grass, that looked extremely dry from the current Florida drought. Firefighters were just pulling in behind me as I was setting up my video camera and tripod. They quickly setup to protect a lakeside structure in the back of the motel that looked to be direct in the path of the brushfire. Luckily after about 15 minutes the fire hit a natural green vegetation fire line and settled down some. Firefighters looked to have the situation under control and started to put out the remaining hot spots.

As how the fire started I’m not sure at all as of this post, but at one point during the fire, a man walked up and said something about…

“They have a fire permit to burn off the old brush, but looks like it jumped out of the contained area”.

I’m not sure if this is true or not, or really at all how the brushfire started, but if this is true, how in the heck can you get a fire permit in the middle of the current drought were in? To my understanding we are currently in phase 3 water restrictions along with a burn ban. I know we have received some rains over the last two weeks, but it’s still extremely dry out there. It was breezy as well early this afternoon (2pm) and with all the dry drought conditions, it would of not been the best time to burn off old brush, or have any type of burning taking place. This could of turned out much worst if the fire reached the motel or any other structures not far down wind of the fire.

Anyways - that’s my little update on this brushfire and included video. If I find out anymore on this event, I’ll edit and include it to this post.

Related Posts:

• Okeechobee City Lightning Wildfire Video - 7/20/07
• Florida Drought Photos and Video 
• Lake Okeechobee, Buckhead Ridge Wildfire
• Frog Light Wildfire, Glades County
• Florida Drought Reaches Historic Levels, Pictures

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