Florida is on fire. No, literally. Each day, the number of wildfires in Florida is increasing. Just this past week, they burned over 22,000 acres of land.
Currently, there are 37 reported wildfires in Florida, and this number is only expected to go up. The Florida Fire Service reported that so far, only 26 of them have been contained. Three of the largest wildfires are located in Palm Beach and Broward County.
Those three fires started around 4:30 p.m., May 4 due to lightning. As of this morning, the two wildfires in Palm Beach – named 2Alpha and L39 – have burned across 4,800 acres.
Over in Boca Raton, the wildfire 2Bravo has grown more than 500% since Thursday, May 5. It has burned around 11,000 acres and is starting to spread east in Western Broward County. Some residents have even reported seeing the wildfires while driving.
Freshman Jeeya Patel, who lives in Coral Springs, reported that she saw the wildfire in Broward County around 8:45 p.m. as she was driving home on the Sawgrass highway.
“I live relatively close to where the fire in Broward County occurred,” Patel said, “I was close enough to see the flames, ambulances, police cars and fire trucks near Sawgrass Trailhead, which is about five minutes away from my house.”
The Boca Raton police have announced that the smoke from the fires had been spreading to other cities in Florida.
Firefighters are doing everything they can to stop the fires. “We have forest rangers equipment behind me monitoring the smoke on the far western edge,” David Rosenbaum, a mitigation specialist with Florida Forest Service, said in an interview with WPBF 25 News.
Rosenbaum reported that even though the firefighters were able to contain most of the fires, the ones in Palm Beach and Broward County were giving them a hard time. The only thing the firefighters can do now is to hope that the canals and natural features of the landscape will be enough to stop, or at least contain, these three wildfires.
