Cape Coral fighters are preparing for an active brush fire season.
Firefighters said they have already responded to brush fires this week, one along Burnt Store Road and Sand Road.
They say areas with dead hurricane debris and dry grass and brush, mixed with wind, create fuel for massive fires.
“We're anticipating an active fire season,” Cape Coral Fire Battalion Chief Kevin Haines said.
The Florida Forest Service is doing controlled burns now. One of which is in the Babcock area in Charlotte County east of Interstate 75. There is 200 acres under a controlled burn.
“By doing a prescribed burn ahead of time, you're controlling the fuel load,” Haines said. “So you much rather have it under a controlled environment and burn off the excess.”
The goal is to prevent fires from getting out of control during the dry season.
“We're almost to the point that in the next couple of months, it'll be too late to do the prescribed burns,” he said. “So we're trying to get a lot of them done before you get to the conditions to work.”
They are expecting weather conditions to heat up and dry out. Just the smallest spark could fuel a fire.
“The littlest of things sparks ATVs, lawnmowers, and things like that,” Haines said. “A car sitting on the side of the road or in the grass field when it gets dry. And then when you add the cold weather, and you get your first cold snap, and you get the freeze, it takes the rest of that moisture out.”
Cold days and nights make it even drier. Fires are already popping up.
Many tell NBC2 they are concerned after seeing the California wildfires.
“We have the Yucca Penn area, that's a large area, and we've got some large fires out there in years past,” Haines said. “But typically, what we have here, we can usually get ahead of it and we typically try and dump a lot of resources on it early to prevent it from escalating to that.”
Firefighters said soon it is going to be too late for prescribed burns due to weather conditions heating up and drying out. But they have the training and equipment ready to fight these brush fires this season.