Florida wildfire prompts at least 600 evacuations and a local state of emergency

[groundloop]

Source: CBS News

A wildfire in northwestern Florida has prompted officials to declare a local state of emergency and institute mandatory evacuation orders, officials said Friday. The blaze as of Saturday morning had grown to 1,400 acres and was 30% contained.

600 homes have been evacuated, with two confirmed destroyed and 12 damaged, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Multiple agencies in Bay County and neighboring counties are responding to the fire. More than a dozen tractor plow units are on the ground, multiple helicopters are assisting from the air and more than 200 firefighters are battling the blaze, the Florida Forest Service said.

[snip]

The Florida Forest Service said the fire is burning in the area where Hurricane Michael felled 72 million tons of trees, which "serve as fuel for wildfires." The service warned of an elevated statewide fire danger level coupled with "critically low humidity" for the weekend.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-wildfire-evacuations-emergency/

[BumRushDaShow]

1. This is normally when they have them

because winter is the "dry season" there (and summer is the "rainy season", where the opposite happens on the west coast). The moderate La Nina pattern this year has actually skewed it wetter down there than usual until recently. A similar phenomena happens up here in the northern Midatlantic states with brush fire season about to begin.

Am guessing the tourist P.R. machine is able to suppress mention of their normal wildfire or sink hole issues unless they really wreck some havoc and make the national news.

[Grokenstein]

2. Should have raked their forests better. /s

Isn't it nice to have a President who actually does something to help, rather than tossing paper towels or insults?

Bay County is on the panhandle, between Pensacola and Tallahassee.

[Chainfire]

4. The county is home of Panama City, also know as the Redneck Rivera.

It is the Summer getaway for the people of LA. (lower Alabama)

[Stuckinthebush]

8. And Birmingham, Atlanta, Nashville

Many in the southeast go to the gulf in that area. It is absolutely beautiful on the gulf. The beaches are stunning and the water is crystal clear at times - except August when the seaweed moves in and it feels like seaweed soup swimming in the hot Gulf of Mexico.

[Chainfire]

3. I live a couple of counties away, and this time of year

the air is always full of smoke, most of it control burns, or burning of hay fields. A few months ago, in anticipation of wild fires, I hired a bulldozer to push the woods back another 40 yards from my house. I lost 2/3s of my trees to Hurricane Michael and they have become a bit of danger. It cost a small fortune to have the dead trees cleared out (they resemble a pile of giant pick-up-sticks) so they lay where they fell. Around here it has been as dry as a popcorn fart for a while so it is just a matter of time.

[IronLionZion]

5. Florida has wildfires?

I thought they normally get plenty of rain.

[Chainfire]

9. It is seasonal

and the seasons have lost a lot of meaning in the past 20 years. I had March flowers blooming in Jan... Several days ago it was 88 F on my front porch and it should have been about 55.

Where I live, 50 miles from the current fires, it has been very dry. There are uncounted millions of cubic feet of dead trees left over from hurricane Michael. There is a swath of dead timber 50 miles wide from Panama City (the home of the current fires) to the Georgia line, and beyond. We are perfectly positioned for wildfires. We are one lightning strike, or one burn pit away from really big fires. This area is not the tropical environment of Miami, where it can rain a little nearly every day, and we are surrounded by forests. The Apalachicola National Forest alone is about 633,000 acres, (almost the size of Rhode Island) mostly wilderness, mostly planted pines. The tropical Florida that most people think of, with swaying palm trees and alligators really begins at about the middle of the state, North to South.

[usaf-vet]

6. The link took me to a story about voring to establishing the January 6 commision..... WHAT?

[groundloop]

7. I just checked and it points to the correct story....

Is it possible they were just showing a different video when you went there?