FLORIDA CITY, Fla. – A large brush fire continued to trigger vital disruptions in two South Florida counties Wednesday.
The hearth broke out Tuesday in far south Miami-Dade, resulting in closures of Card Sound Highway and the 18-Mile Stretch of U.S. 1, the one methods out and in of the Florida Keys.
Drivers on either side had been stranded for hours. Some camped out at a Winn-Dixie on Key Largo. The well-known Gilbert’s Resort put up kitchen and entrance desk workers within the lodge.
“It’s tough as a result of so a lot of our workforce — people who work within the Higher Keys — stay in Dade, so that they need to get house to their household, buddies, decide up children,” Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay mentioned. “They couldn’t do it.”
U.S. 1 was again open on Wednesday, however Card Sound Highway remained shut down.
As of Wednesday, it had burned 3,200 acres and was solely 20% contained.
The Florida Forest Service and Miami-Dade Hearth Rescue are utilizing vital air sources to fight the blaze, difficult by dry air and marshy situations.
“The hearth is massive, nevertheless it’s in all probability going to get greater,” Kevin MacEwen, with the Florida Forest Service, mentioned. “We’re proper right here in between Miami and Key Largo, the ocean’s proper there, and it’s very gentle, very tough. So we have now to make use of quite a lot of air sources and present boundaries and pure limitations to test up the hearth. And we simply ask everybody to be, simply, affected person.”
Officers mentioned the 18-Mile Stretch might shut once more relying on situations.
Residents of each south Miami-Dade and the Keys had been being requested to carefully monitor developments.
In the meantime, one other, less-disruptive brush hearth broke out Wednesday in Sweetwater. There have been “no reported accidents or threats to close by constructions,” Miami-Dade hearth officers mentioned.
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