Hundreds of homes in the Florida Panhandle have been evacuated as wildfires continue to rage in the state, Officials said.

The largest of the fires, called the Bertha Swamp Road Fire, scorched 3.530 acres and was 10% contained when it flared near East Panama City where more than a dozen houses were damaged by the weekend, said Joe Zwierzchowski, spokesman for the Florida Forest Service.

Fire burned on 8.000 acres in Panhandle

A 120-bed nursing home in Panama City has also been evacuated because of the smoke.

One of the blazes, called the Adkins Avenue Fire, destroyed two buildings after it broke out on Friday and damaged 12 additional homes.

The 72 million metric tons of lush vegetation left by the category 5 storm has dried up with drought-like conditions in the area that hasn’t received a serious rain in three months, it said.

A spokesman from the Florida Forest Service said the early start of the fire season looked ominous because there are 168 wildfires blazing across the state currently.

Dead vegetation and abandoned wood from Hurricane Michael that hit the Panhandle in 2018 have fueled wildfires, Zwierzchowski said.


Florida

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Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, (wikipedia)


Hurricane Michael

Hurricane Michael was a very powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that became the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in the contiguous United States since Andrew in 1992. Additionally, (wikipedia)