By Ryan Mills
Naples Daily News
GOLDEN GATE, Fla. — Golden Gate Estates residents can expect to smell smoke for the next few days after two brush fires erupted Tuesday near the Collier and Broward County border.
The fires — one 170 acres, the other 17 acres — were burning Tuesday afternoon a few miles south of Oil Well Road and east of Desoto Boulevard on private Collier Enterprises land, said Michael Weston, a senior forester for the Florida Division of Florida. Smoke could be seen billowing from a field early Tuesday evening, and the air was hazy at the nearby intersection of Golden Gate Boulevard and Everglades Boulevard where an 800-acre inferno destroyed three homes in late May 2008.
By 6:30 p.m. the smaller fire was completely contained, and the larger fire was about 65 percent contained, Weston said. Winds were blowing from the northeast and east.
“I’d say for the next few days people are going to be smelling smoke in the Golden Gate area,” Weston said.
Contrary to earlier reports, the fire was not a controlled burn.
“We don’t know what started it,” Weston said. “Access was difficult.”
There was only one home in the vicinity of the fires, and it was not threatened Tuesday, Weston said. Seven firefighters from the Division of Forestry battled the blazes with the help of Big Corkscrew firefighters.
Just two months ago, Division of Forestry officials said soil moisture in Southwest Florida was about average, and they were expecting a normal brush fire season in 2009. However, this week officials announced that recent cold weather and freezes, combined with ongoing dry conditions, have quickly worsened the wildfire conditions in the area.
Now wildfire experts are expecting dry conditions to worsen beyond 2008 conditions.
As of Tuesday, the mean soil moisture in Collier County was 667 on the Keetch-Byram Drought Index, which measures soil moisture on a zero to 800 scale with higher numbers representing increased fire risk.
Soil moisture in Lee County is 567.
“We can expect fires like this that have room to move to go ahead and do so,” Weston said.
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