Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Firefighters attempt to put out the fire that threatens an endangered sparrow.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
FLORIDA CITY, Fla. — Wildfires crackled across South Florida on Monday, veiling the region with a smoky pall, forcing schoolkids indoors, triggering health alerts and sending prisoners to safer cells. The Mustang Corner fire in Everglades National Park also is threatening the already endangered Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow, motivating firefighters to quash the blaze completely rather than let it run its natural course and be extinguished by seasonal rainfall, which this year appears to be late.
While the Everglades fire — set by a human, either accidentally or intentionally — has consumed nearly 36,000 acres since Wednesday, muck fires on Lake Okeechobee’s drought-exposed bed have torn through more than 26,000 acres since May 1. Low humidity and dry temperatures in the mid-90s have sustained more than 1,000 fires across the state since January.
No homes were threatened Monday afternoon, but officials evacuated a state prison and a federal immigration lockup near Krome Avenue in southwest Miami-Dade County after the fire crept within 10 miles. Prisoners totaling 1,753 at Everglades Correctional Institution and 535 detainees at the Krome Detention Center were being parceled out to other facilities.
“We are transferring them to various facilities around Florida, but we don’t know when they’d be returning. Right now, our top priority is their safety and security,” said Barbara Gonzalez, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some may be taken to out-of-state facilities if they can’t be housed in Florida, Gonzalez said.
While violent rainstorms soaked many South Florida locales, they did little more than tease the fires.
“There wasn’t any rain on the fire itself,” said Michelle Finch, with the Southern Area Incident Management Team, a state and federal task force coordinating efforts at the Everglades fire.
Officials said a trace of rain fell on Lake Okeechobee’s western end, near the fires, but had no effect.
Southwest winds sent smoke across Broward skies, causing health officials to once again urge those with respiratory problems to stay indoors. School officials curtailed students’ outside activity Monday and will consider doing so again today if the smoke persists.
While the south and western portions of the Everglades blaze are under control, the winds channeled the fire between two previously burned areas toward the national park’s northeastern corner.
“This is the part that really, really has us concerned,” said C.J. Norvell, a spokeswoman for the fire management team operating out of the Holiday Inn in Florida City.
Because of the danger on the ground, firefighters are mounting an aerial attack on the blaze. Eight helicopters and a half dozen fixed-wing tankers are dumping thousands of gallons of water in front of the blaze, hoping to deny it fuel. “They are really hammering it with water,” Norvell said.
“The main reason we intend to fully suppress the fire is we wanted to protect the known population of the Cape Sable Sparrow,” said Bridget Litten, with the fire management team.
“The presence of the sparrow has added a whole new wrinkle to things,” said Larry Perez, science communications liaison with the National Parks Service. “The sparrow is definitely impacting our strategy for full suppression.”
The only real panacea is rain.
Meteorologist John Pendergrast with the National Weather Service said chances of rain Tuesday should be about 30 percent.