925 Acre Fire Gets Out Of Contol With Sudden Wind Shift
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Updated: 7:34 AM Jul 3, 2009
925 Acre Fire Gets Out Of Contol With Sudden Wind Shift
Panama City Beach and Bay County Firefighters have contained a controlled burn that got out of control Thursday afternoon.
Posted: 10:43 PM Jul 2, 2009
Breakfast Point Fire
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Panama City Beach and Bay County Firefighters have contained a controlled burn that got out of control Thursday afternoon.

The 925 acre fire was north of Back Beach Road in the Breakfast Point area.

Fire crews stood guard at Breakfast Point Academy, to make sure the fire did not spread to the school.

County fire officials say at one point the fire was moving towards the southeast to an area near the Alexan apartments.

A wind shift played a role in causing the fire to spread. It was a controlled burn by the St. Joe Company designed to thin out under brush.

The fire got out of control as thousands of tourists were heading to Panama City Beach for an early start to the holiday weekend. The thick black smoke, visible for miles, backed up traffic on Back Beach Road. Traffic was actually blocked by sheriff's deputies for about half hour because of very limited visibility.

The crush of vacation traffic compounded by the fire caused traffic to back backed up at least 4 miles east of the Hathaway bridge on West 98 all the way to downtown Harrison avenue.

Latest Comments

Posted by: Anonymous Location: Bay County on Jul 5, 2009 at 08:41 AM

I hope these boys learn from their mistake and keep a closer eye on the weather during future controlled burns. Controlled burns are a good thing because they clear brush that could cause huge fires like the one we had when the control burn got out of hand. The Florida Division of Forestry is to blame here and I think they need to be trained better and should plan controlled burns more carefully.
Posted by: ZULU Location: PCB on Jul 4, 2009 at 02:27 PM

I can understand that you need a job and work to pay for your family, but there are other weekends, oter days,,,,,,NOT this weekend NOR when we are under a fire safety warning. How wuld you feel Annoymous, if your house and family lived near this burn site that went out-of-control?? People with resiratory problems, yes this is a big issue!! Also, I know there were no helicopters dumping water over the site, I saw 1 checking out the site to see how far it had spread. This is sheer incompetency.
Posted by: freddy Location: pcb on Jul 4, 2009 at 12:52 PM

So Anynomous, your are basically just paid arsonist?
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