MARTIN COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Martin County saw 2 brush fires this week, including one sparked by a lightning strike. Both are now fully contained and being monitored by the Florida Forest Service.<\/p>\n
The Florida Forest Service says the conditions that fuel these fires are not going away anytime soon, but residents should not be alarmed.<\/p>\n
WATCH WPTV’S COVERAGE BELOW:<\/p>\n
Martin County brush fires contained, but Florida Forest Service says more expected this summer<\/p>\n
David Grubitch, a mitigation specialist and spokesperson with the department, said this is their peak season.<\/p>\n
“We’re in that summertime where you don’t even want to be outside; it’s hot, so that same heat is drying out these fine dead fuels and what happens is the fuels are receptive and they’re ready, so when you get a lightning strike, it’s going to go out there, it’s going to start a fire,” said Grubitch.<\/p>\n
Grubitch explained that rain often extinguishes these fires immediately, but sometimes they travel underground and surface days later.<\/p>\n
He said the public plays a crucial role in helping the Florida Forest Service do its job. Grubitch stressed that residents should never assume someone else has already called in a brush fire. If you see something, say something, as he said, it can make all the difference in how quickly crews are able to get a fire under control.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MARTIN COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Martin County saw 2 brush fires this week, including one sparked by a lightning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[28,35099,92102,1160,139051,171,173,172,179,12758],"class_list":["post-337865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-florida","tag-florida-forest-service","tag-lightning-strike-fire","tag-martin-county","tag-martin-county-brush-fires","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-treasure-coast","tag-wptv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337865","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=337865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}