Fire chasers

In the midwest, they have tornado chasers. Here in Florida, they have "fire chasers." Well, they do now that Joelle and I are down here, anyway. =-)

In Florida, during dry season, it's not at all uncommon for huge wildfires to sprout up. Today, while Joelle and I were at Bennigans, we looked out the window and saw a WALL of thick, black smoke in the distance. Our server put on the news, and we saw that yet another brush fire had started off of 75--but unlike the other fires this season, this one was just a few miles down the road. The newscasters informed us that emergency officials were urging everyone to "avoid the area" due to the severity of this particular fire.

So, of course, we hopped in my car and started driving TOWARDS the fire.

We didn't get very far, though, because traffic was just HORRIBLE. They had closed down a big stretch of 75 and, of course, all that traffic was being rerouted onto the surface streets. We just wanted to be able to get close enough to take some pictures for our friends and family back home.

This is the only one she sent me so far and it doesn't even do it justice, but here you go. Mind you, the fire itself was still miles away at this point. (And yes, I know it's sideways, but I don't know how to fix it on here.)















Here's another picture from one of the station's websites. (Copyright infringement, I'm sure, so I'm hereby crediting it to winktv.com.) I'm also posting a brief little write-up on it. For the record, the affected stretch of 75 that they're talking about is like FIVE MILES long. It covered *40* acres. It's actually still burning now (10 pm) but they say it's "100% contained."

http://www.winknews.com/news/local/6940812.html