{"id":31440,"date":"2023-03-28T22:22:55","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T02:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=31440"},"modified":"2023-03-28T22:22:59","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T02:22:59","slug":"brush-fire-spreads-to-nearly-500-acres-prompting-evacuations-in-eastern-polk-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/03\/28\/brush-fire-spreads-to-nearly-500-acres-prompting-evacuations-in-eastern-polk-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Brush fire spreads to nearly 500 acres prompting evacuations in eastern Polk County"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Florida Forest Service is working to extinguish a brush fire that has spread to almost 500 acres in the River Ranch area of Polk County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"1080\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1920 \/ 1080;\" width=\"1920\" controls src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/hHstCrthkwqeHMxR.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The brush fire is located off State Road 60, just east of Frostproof. Evacuations are underway for some homes and buildings in the Canopy Oaks portion of River Ranch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At this time, 10 tractors are rolling through some fire breaks to stop flames from spreading as 50% of the fire has been contained,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FFS_Lakeland\/status\/1640868762059522051\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Florida Forest Service says.<\/a>&nbsp;However, wind and the dry brush conditions are making it more difficult to contain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" data-id=\"31443\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-1-1024x576.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-31443\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-1-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-1-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-1-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-1.png 1280w\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" data-id=\"31442\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-2-1024x576.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-31442\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-2-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-2-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-2-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-2.png 1280w\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" data-id=\"31444\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-3-1024x576.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-31444\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-3-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-3-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-3-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/download-3.png 1280w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No one is reported to be hurt, but multiple outbuildings have been lost. Investigators are still working to learn how the fire started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wtsp.com\/article\/weather\/drought-conditions-continue-to-worsen-across-florida-dry-fires-rainy-season\/67-f44995b0-fcbb-4389-9a49-ac8b55324990\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Drought conditions<\/a>&nbsp;started to develop in west Central Florida in February but have continued to worsen through March. The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/droughtmonitor.unl.edu\/\">latest drought monitor<\/a>&nbsp;came in last week, and it showed the entire Tampa Bay area under a moderate drought. The worse conditions are across Southwest Florida where a severe drought has continued to expand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The concern is that with dry weather continuing this drought will only expand and strengthen. That could cause issues across the state including higher wildfire risks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Florida Forest Service is working to extinguish a brush fire that has spread to almost 500 acres in the River Ranch area of Polk County. The brush fire is&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[4819],"class_list":["post-31440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-brush-fire-spreads-to-nearly-500-acres-prompting-evacuations-in-eastern-polk-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}