Wild Fires Break Out Around the World in 2007

The poet Robert Frost wrote "Some say the world will end in fire,/ Some say in ice." Those who have been watching the news this year may agree with Frost when he says "I hold with those who favor fire." This year, 2007, has seen more and bigger wild fires than any in recent history.

The big fires really started in April, when wildfires broke out in the swamps of southern Georgia and northern Florida. The Georgia fires started in mid-April in at least four different areas (Bugaboo Scrub, Sweat Farm, Big Turnaround, and Kneeknocker) by lightning and downed power lines. although two boys were later arrested and charged with arson, one in Ware County, Georgia, and one in Wayne County.

Swamp fires are an annual event in south Georgia, but in an average year only about 8,000 acres burn. The Sweat Fire burned 10,000 acres in one night. The swamp fires continued into may. Two fires along the Georgia-Florida border covered 130,000 acres, or about 203 square miles; in Georgia, a fire in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge had burned 170,000 acres and was called the largest fire in Georgia history. Ten miles away another fire had burned 40,000 acres.

When all was finally out, over 500,000 acres had burned in those two states. Even when the surface flames were out in mid-May, and new growth began to return in the burned areas, experts said that fire continued to burn some 20 feet below the surface. Photo 1, taken by Jacques Descloitres of NASA using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) shows the Georgia and Florida fires as red dots; smoke can also be seen www.firstcoastnews.com , www.csmonitor.com ).

In early May, a fire broke out in northeastern Minnesota in an area that was largely wilderness. It burned about 25 square miles in Minnesota and spread into Canada.