South Florida

Florida Forest Service Dealing with Brush Fire Aftermath

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Scorched trees and charred land is what's left behind after brush fires raged through parts of South Florida.

NBC 6 got an exclusive look at what the brush fires left behind.

The Florida Forest Service says it’s all about the weather conditions that are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to putting out these kinds of brush fires.

The wind being a big component and another big challenge being manpower.

The FFS battled the blaze near southwest 137th Avenue and the machine they used is their version of a fire engine and a critical firefighting tool.

Burned palm trees, broken weeds and ashy ground.

“A lot of this is burned out but it just spreads very rapidly,” Pete Donahue of the FFS said.

Fire crews are still on edge, hoping another fire doesn’t spark up.

“So right now conditions are ripe for fires,” David Rosenbaum of the FFS said.

Those conditions: high winds, high heat and low humidity.

“We will say it was incendiary which means human caused fire but we don’t know who the perpetrator is,” Rosenbaum said.

The fires burned nearly 630 acres.

“I would give this a seven or eight,” Donahue said of the severity of the fires. “I mean it was pretty challenging, the winds were swapping around.”

Donahue also says they could use more hands on deck.

“With a lack of resources that we have and the lack of personnel,” he said, “it takes a lot longer to put a fire out like this because we’re just kind of stretched thin.”

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