ORLANDO, Fla. – Nearly 1,000 brush fires have ignited across Florida since the start of the year as drought conditions intensify and firefighters brace for what officials warn could be a severe wildfire season.<\/p>\n
The Florida Forest Service reports 993 brush fires since Jan. 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Local perspective:<\/p>\n
Officials say prolonged dry weather, recent freezes that killed vegetation and low humidity combined with gusty winds have heightened the risk of fast-moving fires.<\/p>\n
Cliff Frazier of the Florida Forest Service said the conditions resemble those of the devastating 1998 wildfire season, when three people died and roughly half a million acres burned statewide.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX LOCAL APP<\/a><\/p>\n “This is not our first rodeo. We\u2019ve seen this before,” Frazier said, warning that dry, dead vegetation serves as fuel.<\/p>\n In response to past disasters, Florida expanded its prescribed burning program and now leads the nation in controlled burns. A recent prescribed fire in Orange County cleared about 20 acres at Kelly Park in an effort to reduce fuel loads.<\/p>\n SIGN-UP FOR FOX 35’S BREAKING NEWS, DAILY NEWS NEWSLETTERS<\/a><\/p>\n Even so, new fires continue to spark. In Seminole County, a small brush fire broke out after a backyard fire pit got out of control, officials said. Assistant Fire Chief Todd Zellers said there is no burn ban in place locally, but the entire state is under a moderate fire danger risk.<\/p>\n What you can do:<\/p>\n Authorities urged residents to use caution, noting that with homes built close together and winds picking up, conditions can quickly turn dangerous.<\/p>\n The Source: This story was written based on information shared by the Florida Forest Service and Seminole County Fire Rescue.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 Florida News<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. – Nearly 1,000 brush fires have ignited across Florida since the start of the year as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[630,47,115,139,141,140,628],"class_list":["post-172487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-crime-publicsafety","tag-fl","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}