Krome Avenue remains closed after lightning sparks ‘escalating’ brush fire with heavy smoke
A stretch of Krome Avenue from Kendall Drive to Southwest Eighth Street remains shut down due to heavy smoke Tuesday afternoon as crews battle a large brush fire caused by lightning.
Enveloping 582 acres, the fire is 50% contained to the east side of Krome Avenue, according to The Florida Forest Service Everglades District. Melaleuca, a highly flammable invasive plant from Australia known for pestering the Everglades, is fueling the three-day-old flames.
FFS Everglades District, the lead agency, got a call at 6:02 p.m. Sunday about the fire on the east side of Krome, said Public Information Officer Scott Peterich. Embers later jumped to the west side of the road into an area he called wild land.
“It doesn’t take much to start a fire, and once it gets started in these areas like that, it gets going for days,” Peterich said Tuesday.
By 11:30 a.m. Monday, about 10 Fire Rescue units arrived at the scene in West Miami-Dade near Southwest 167th Avenue and 56th Street, said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief John Arias.
Florida Highway Patrol and police blocked off Southwest 88th Street (Kendall Drive) to Eighth Street as smoke covered the area.
“It’s just slowly been escalating,” Arias said Monday.
Peterich said on Monday that he didn’t know when roads would open. This is still the case, as he said he believes the area will remain shut down until the agency leaves.
“We don’t have any idea,”’ he said. “There’s smoke — just thick smoke going across the road from about a mile-and-a-half section.”
Fires tend to meander, he said Tuesday, so there are pockets of ground not yet burned. To slow down the flames, the Florida forest agency — which serves Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach counties — burns the untouched ground.
“We burn around the exterior of the fire so it doesn’t jump, and now we’re just dealing with the burning mess inside,” he said Tuesday. “It’s really difficult to work.”
The officer said he doesn’t see the fire budging unless rain decides to fall or the agency’s burnout of the area is successful.
But Larry Kelly, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Miami is optimistic about rain.
While the area hasn’t see much moisture in the afternoon, he said Tuesday that there’s a 50% chance it’ll rain this evening or night.
There’s a 70% chance of rain in that area on Wednesday, 60% chance on Thursday and about 50% through Friday and the weekend.
“It all depends on the amount [of rain], I mean obviously rain helps,” he said.
The fire hasn’t affected any buildings or harmed people.
However, Peterich noted that as part of the fire moved west Monday, it ran into a burnout at a nearby reservoir of the Everglades National Park before eventually dying out. He added that he was especially concerned with its movement since the Everglades Correctional Institution was nearby.
“And we’ve been very fortunate that we’ve had an east wind, if we had a south wind, it would be pushing the fire to the north, possibly threatening, threatening a correctional facility.”
FHP, which hasn’t responded to requests for comment, tweeted a photo of the scene at Krome Avenue.
This story was originally published May 31, 2021 at 2:27 PM.
