MURDOCK\u00a0\u2014 The Charlotte County Commission voted Tuesday to end its months-long burn ban that prohibits outdoor recreational fires and fireworks.<\/p>\n
The ban had been in place since April 28 when the Keetch-Byram Drought Index indicated severe danger from wildfires due to drought conditions. A previous county ban on burning had been in place from December 2025 through most of March 2026.<\/p>\n
Charlotte County Fire Chief Matt McElroy said he was glad to see the drought index number trending down, “with all the rain that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you know, we had a dry June and moving into the July, we’ve gotten a lot of rain, not near as much as out west or up north, but we are getting the rain that we need,”\u00a0McElroy said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The measure passed unanimously.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough I’ve only had 1 inch of rain in my house in the last two weeks, I’ll move approval of the resolution,\u201d Commissioner Ken Doherty said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The rainy season has begun in Florida, meaning the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI) is showing lower danger of wildfire than it had in June.<\/p>\n
CHARLOTTE COUNTY<\/p>\n
Sarasota County ended its burn ban July 12, with a notice from the county\u2019s fire chief. Unlike Charlotte County, Sarasota County has its ban set to the Keetch-Byram index.<\/p>\n
Charlotte County also uses the index, but for a ban to be put in place or lifted, the County Commission must vote.<\/p>\n
DeSoto County ended its burn ban July 14; the city of North Port ended its ban July 20.<\/p>\n
Charlotte County had discussed ending its burn ban twice in recent weeks, once on June 22, and again on July 2, just days ahead of Fourth of July celebrations.<\/p>\n
Both times the commissioners decided to leave the ban in place, citing the potential danger of brush fires during those periods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MURDOCK\u00a0\u2014 The Charlotte County Commission voted Tuesday to end its months-long burn ban that prohibits outdoor recreational fires…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[29325,34873,209,211,210,853,144966,5378],"class_list":["post-355091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-brush-fire","tag-burn-ban","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-charlotte-county","tag-drought-index","tag-fire-chief"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355091","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=355091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}