Drought Conditions Creating Perfect Wildfire Environment

Firefighters in Collier County are making progress to contain a large wildfire just south of 75, about 25 miles east of Naples. The fire has burned more than 35,000 acres. At least 60% of the blaze has been contained. The exact cause of the fire has not been released, but our extreme drought conditions, creating the perfect environment for even a tiny spark to develop into a dangerous wildfire. With more, we are joined by WGCU news senior environmental reporter Tom Bayles. Can you explain why we are in such an extreme drought at this point? Yes. In February of last year, basically, the spigot got shut off. And of course, drought has no drought. It's a unique weather phenomenon, and that it doesn't have a trigger that says, hey, you're starting a drought like a hurricane or or a flood. There's an event that occurs, you know, to that, you know, it's coming. Drought just sneaks in and all of a sudden it is. And that's what happened with this. It got drier and drier into last summer. And then a heat down slid over southwest Florida, which for about ten days is when we set all sorts of new high temperature records throughout the region, from Punta Gorda to Fort Myers and South. Combine that with an anemic, rainy season last year, again, a foot below normal. And, in Fort Myers alone, a deficit we haven't come back from. And now here we are with parched soil, seven eight inches of the topsoil all the way down. Doesn't have any moisture in it. It's almost desert like conditions. According to some of the graphs that, that they rely on, like to keep Byram drought Index. How does this impact the threat for wildfires? It basically makes the woods a tinderbox. You can simply pull into high grass with your car. And maybe a catalytic converter is still there, or it's just hot. You can actually light the grass on the side of the road on fire and leave and not even realize you've done that. Certainly, cigaret butts are not to be thrown out the window any time, but especially right now, because that can set off a blaze of any size. If it's something like, along along the forest roadway, and there is a significant fire that has been burning in Collier County, and it's at least 35,000 acres. They are working on containing it. What is the biggest concern with this particular fire? The biggest concern with that fire, it is been the smoke. For the first couple of weeks, the smoke was blowing over Interstate 75 or Alligator Alley at that point. It was closed several times by the Florida Highway Patrol because you just couldn't see. There was even a forecast of something very rare, which is called a super fog. And it's basically a whiteout without the snow. It's ash instead of snow. Very unique meteorological conditions have to come together for that, but that will put visibility to maybe ten feet in front of your car. So obviously the authorities had to shut the highway down. Then, State Road 29, which runs down, the west side of the fire, has also been closed and open and closed. So this fire is stubborn and they haven't been able to get a handle on it, despite crews coming in from other parts of the country and us spending over $3 million fighting it to this point. Why is it so expensive to fight fires? We had talked about this at 3.5 million so far for that particular fire. It's an expensive operation. You have to think of all the manpower. When when these people come in from other states with all their equipment and all their over time, that's something that we would be on the hook for. Even though they're coming in, they still need to get paid. They still need to get fed. Their equipment is still being used. The gas and all the other stuff that that will be part of what they do. The wear and tear on the vehicles, all of that stuff is build and is paid that. And then you have drops of, helicopter drops of water and, some stuff to do. Back fires to keep the fire to burn out ahead of the fire. Some of those are little ping pong ball things that light on fire when, when they are dropped out of the helicopter to create a fire line in and behind the fire and keep it from advancing. All of that stuff costs money. Every helicopter trip costs thousands of dollars. It's been going for a week or two weeks now, over two weeks, so you can imagine how much it's building up every day. And I, saw that it said, it was sparked. It said human sparked. We don't know what the circumstances were. What can we do to try to really help keep this from happening? What's within our power? I think it's awareness of just how dry it is. You have to understand that if you pull in high grass with a hot engine, you can start a wildfire. If you throw out a cigaret butt, which is littering, you shouldn't do it anyway. It can start a wildfire. If you break one of the many burn bans that the counties throughout Florida have right now. And just a spark from a campfire or a trash burn in your backyard gets loose. It can start a wildfire a half mile away. And you might not know it because it's smoldering. Correct. And it can flare up down the road. And you don't even know that what you did contributed to. Absolutely. So it can be human caused, but not be arson. Is there anything else that you would like to add about the significance of this wildfire season? Well, the a drought has tentacles that run out into the entire environment and the economy itself. This is a big deal in terms of weather phenomena and our region. If we have wildfires and we have major arteries shut down like Interstate 75, and it makes national news, it's just another reason for people to decide to vacation somewhere else. It's another reason for people who live here decide to stay home. So it it can affect the economy in that way. It is also a loss of quality of life. You can't go to the Big Cypress National Preserve. Certain areas now they're starting to reopen. But while the wildfire was, doing its thing, the more actively in the last few weeks, the whole area was shut down. Drought is a insidious thing, and we don't know when it's going to go away, and we don't know when they're coming. Well, thank you for your insight and your expertise. And you're going to keep us, tracking all of this information. So we will check back for updates in the coming days. I have, reports on WGCU, FM as well as, written online at WGCU.org and also, here. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you so much for covering our environment. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today. You're welcome.