Date: Friday, March 26, 2010
Section: A SECTION
Edition: FINAL
Page: A1
Source: Anika Myers Palm, Orlando Sentinel

Plants killed by cold winter may fuel explosive wildfires

Jane Sordyl and her husband, Joe, expected an uneventful Mother's Day at their Palm Bay home almost two years ago. Then a wall of flames roared to life.

A dozen firefighters toiled 11 hours to beat down a massive wildfire that threatened a neighbor's home and came within 4 feet of their house.

"By the time I walked out, the flames were above the trees," Sordyl said.

Such chaotic scenes spring up across Central Florida routinely during dry months. But the wildfire risk is higher than normal this year.

That's because the cold snaps this winter — one of the coldest on record — left vast amounts of dead vegetation — what fire and weather experts describe as wildfire fuel.

"That's fuel on top of the ground," said Cliff Frazier, a wildfire-mitigation specialist with the state Division of Forestry. "You can walk outside and pick up leaves in your hand, and if they're brown and they crumble, they could ignite."

No one can say when the next wildfire will strike. But April is usually one of driest months in Florida.

Right now, Central Florida is still a bit soggy from recent rains. Orlando has had about 6 inches more rain than at this time last year, according to meteorologist Arlena Moses of the National Weather Service in Melbourne.

History of wildfires in Central Florida

But a few dry days, along with persistent heat and breezy conditions, could rapidly increase the wildfire risk.

In 2009, for example, thousands of acres of brush burned in eastern Orange County during the dry season in remote areas. Few homes were affected.

A year earlier, rapidly spreading fires destroyed dozens of homes in Cocoa, Palm Bay and Malabar.

A fire near Paisley in Lake County destroyed more than 1,000 acres, forcing residents from nearly 100 homes to flee temporarily.

On some days during the busy 2008 fire season, more than 60 wildfires burned statewide on a single day.

The situation grew so dire that the U.S. Forestry Service placed restrictions on campfires in Ocala National Forest.

To reduce their wildfire risks, homeowners should clear their roofs and the immediate area around their homes of dead foliage and anything else that could quickly ignite, fire experts say.

"If a homeowner has a minimum defensible space of 30 feet around the house, then that home has a 95 percent chance of survival," Frazier said.

Prescribed burns help avoid disaster

The Division of Forestry also combats fire season by burning foliage in wooded areas that could be firetraps during dry, windy weather.

Typically, the division does more than 150 controlled burns each year throughout Orange, Brevard, Osceola and Seminole counties, Frazier said.

Cattle ranchers often contact forestry experts to conduct the burns, which can alarm passers-by who see smoke and flames but don't know fire and forestry officials are controlling the blazes.

"When they're able to do that without too much uproar from the people, it helps us tremendously," said Dennis Mudge, livestock agent for the University of Florida extension service in Orlando.

Some wildfires in 1998 and 1999 actually stopped when they reached pasturelands — areas purged of excess flammable foliage through controlled burns, he added.

As for Sordyl, the Palm Bay resident whose home escaped flames in 2008, she said there was an unexpected benefit from the wildfire: It cleared some of the foliage from her 3-acre property — and made it safer. "It used to be that we couldn't see through those woods," she said. Now they can see a fire coming.