The season for fighting fire with fire has begun.
Each winter, starting near the first frost and lasting through March, experts set fire to certain forest lands to clear out areas of thick, accumulated brush in advance of the hot, dry summer months.
The process, called prescribed burning, keeps the forests healthy and protects residents from potentially dangerous wildfires that could spread quickly through the brush during the summer.
Officials want people to know the smoke they may see billowing into the sky over the next few months is not always cause for alarm.
“Our forests in Northwest Florida are fire-dependent ecosystems that require fire every few years to stay healthy,” said Kevin Hiers, who heads the fire management program at Eglin Air Force Base.
The base encompasses about 464,000 acres, most of it dense forest. Much of that land is used for training missions, including weapons exercises, and the prescribed burns help decrease the chance of mission-caused wildfires during the hot months, Hiers said.
Each year, fire managers at Jackson Guard try to burn about 100,000 acres on the reservation. That ensures each part sees fire every few years.
While they conduct prescribed burns throughout the year for different reasons, January, February and March are the most active. About 20,000 acres are burned each month, Hiers said.
Last week, Jackson Guard burned about 2,000 acres near Navarre and at least another 300 near Niceville.
“If we want to simply reduce wildfire risk by consuming surface fuels (brush), now is the best time to burn,” Hiers said. “Rain is frequent, wind is predictable, and the fire is not very intense.”
He said they might choose a hotter, drier month if the goal is to reduce hardwood encroachment in endangered species’ habitats.
Other agencies, including the Florida Forest Service, also conduct prescribed burns in the winter.
“Prescribed fire is really a safe way to apply what would occur naturally,” said Brian Goddin, a spokesman for the Forest Service’s Chipola district.
He said before houses and roads were built in Florida, lightning strikes would ignite wildfires that would clear sections of the forest and make way for new growth.
If left to its own natural state, Florida actually would replenish itself every three to five years, he said.
Fire specialists have learned how to mimic that natural process using prescribed burns they can control. They try to burn in a similar time period as would naturally occur.
The fires help restore the ecosystem’s health and reduce vegetative buildup that could serve as fuel for a catastrophic wildfire, Goddin said.
Burning off the thick brush allows animals to graze in the area and for fresh growth in the spring. It also clears any non-native vegetation that may have traveled in on car tires or some other way.
Goddin said the Forest Service hopes to burn about 2,500 acres each winter in the 15,000-acre Point Washington State Forest in Santa Rosa Beach, but are behind schedule because of rain and weather conditions.
“We’ve had a lot of wet days,” he said. “The fuel —the vegetation — hasn’t dried up.”
Last week firefighters burned 209 acres, their first prescribed burn in Point Washington this season.
Goddin said it went well.
“Those will be some of the prettiest parts of the forest come spring,” he said.
Fire experts look at a number of factors before determining where and when to burn, including weather conditions, wind direction and speed, and how the smoke will disperse into the sky.
Some of the variables aren’t always reliable, but when everything goes as planned the specialists can conduct the burn so the smoke lifts up and away or blows onto land that isn’t populated. The residents hardly notice an inconvenience.
That’s always the intention, said Mike Spaits, Eglin’s environmental spokesman.
“Every single time we light on Eglin intentionally, the No. 1 consideration is keeping the smoke on the reservation,” he said. “But as Mother Nature has her way of doing, if winds shift, there’s nothing we can do about that.”
It’s rare that prescribed burns lead to unplanned fires. Hiers said Jackson Guard fights more than 100 wildfires a year and rarely even one is caused by a prescribed burn.
But last May, about two weeks after a prescribed burn was completed at Eglin, strong winds from Tropical Storm Beryl reignited the fire and it took off through the reservation.
The fire burned for several days in a swampy area that was difficult for firefighters to reach. It eventually spread to about 2,600 acres northwest of Hurlburt Field.
Hiers said the fire was “very complicated,” but did point to some vulnerabilities in managing a fire in that part of Eglin’s property.
The tropical storm also came before the official start of the hurricane season. Earlier storms can sit in one place for a long time and bring strong wind but little rain to the area, he said.
“We will definitely be on the lookout to avoid any such scenarios in the future,” he said.
He said the fire was stopped quickly because of a great response from mutual aid firefighters and because Jackson Guard had conducted a prescribed burn in an adjacent area earlier in the year which prevented the blaze from spreading further.
“Ultimately, suppression was fast and successful,” he said. “Truth be told, the cause could have just as easily been lightning or cigarettes and under those conditions fire moves quickly.”
TO LEARN MORE: Find more information about prescribed burns at www.goodfires.org.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Lauren Sage Reinlie at 850-315-4443 or firstname.lastname@example.org. Follow her on Twitter @LaurenRnwfdn.