by Chuck Tague

    While my northern friends are waiting and watching for signs of spring, in central Florida there’s a different seasonal change -- the high dry season is here.  Yesterday (March 2), the winds gusted hard from the west, sometimes hitting 35 mph.  Around noon, I noticed a peculiar cloud formation from my office window.  A low rolling cluster of white fluff crept beyond the line of pines northeast of our house.  Then I saw a dark gray cloud.  I ran to the front yard; black smoke billowed over the pines.

The rest of the day was tense.  Reports on television placed the brush fire, we don’t have wild fires in Florida, about two miles northwest of our house.  The residents of the crowded subdivisions around us were fortunate that the winds blew true east.  By two o’clock, the smoke closed I-95 about a mile to the east.  A haze settled into the neighborhood and the smell of smoke was overwhelming.  The whir and thump of helicopters was constant.  Many passed low over our house trailing a sack of water to dump on the blaze.

    Fire officials ordered three hundred homes to evacuate.  The order ended about a third of a mile north of our house.  Most of the people returned before dark.  The only structures damaged were a barn and a chicken coop although many horses had to be transported to safety.  Over a thousand acres burned before the fire was declared 75% contained. This morning the smoke had cleared but the stench of burning pine and palmetto lingered.  Helicopters still circle the neighborhood. 

    Although wild fires are dangerous to humans, their property and livestock, they are crucial components of most Florida natural communities.  A century of fire suppression only intensified the fires when they inevitably returned.  In 1998 a great fire storm devastated the forests just west of Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach, very close to yesterday’s fire.  A state wide program of periodic prescribed burns is intended to prevent large-scale blazes in the future, but prolonged dry spells over the last decade have compounded the problem.

   This is the beginning of the 2013 fire season.  The rains aren’t expected to return until the end of May at the earliest.

Smoky sunset