500-acre control burn causes massive amount of smoke to blow toward Daytona
By Hayley Crombleholme and Cam Tran
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VOLUSIA COUNTY, Florida (WESH) — A large controlled burn in far northern Volusia County is producing plenty of smoke in Daytona Beach.
The 500-acre burn is causing so much smoke that it could be seen on our First Warning Radar and TowerCam network.
The west-northwest winds caused the smoke to head toward Daytona.
According to the Daytona Beach Fire Department, the prescribed burn that started on Wednesday morning was in the area south of SR-40 and west of the Mosaic Subdivision.
“It was pretty smokey, and you saw the embers floating through the air. So you knew it was something bad” said Daniel Joubert, who lives in the area.
People in a neighborhood off of LPGA Boulevard in Daytona said they got a text from the sheriff’s office, letting them know a fire was only about 300 feet from houses on Barefoot Life Lane.
“It was pretty close, and I’ve got a screened-in enclosure over my pool, and I know how sometimes the embers will catch a place on fire. So I was a little nervous,” Joubert said.
The Daytona Beach Fire Department said when the prescribed burn jumped the line in two spots, it created a seven and four-acre fire.
“We actually smelled it earlier this morning. I think when they were doing the normal controlled burn,” said Scott Keene, who lives in the area. “Then we didn’t find out until later that it got out of control.”
The fire department said their crews came out for structural protection while the Florida Forest Service worked to tackle the fires. Both were ultimately contained with no injuries or evacuations.
But they say the smoke could hang over the area for days.
“There’s a lot of concern,” Keene said. “There’s a lot of people here — my wife included — that have, she has asthma. Breathing problems. So coming outside just isn’t part of what she can do right now.”
The area seeing smoke is close to I-95. Florida Highway Patrol said Wednesday they’d had periodic patrols monitoring the visibility.
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