{"id":7722,"date":"2012-05-01T09:30:33","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T14:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=7722"},"modified":"2012-05-01T10:48:22","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T15:48:22","slug":"fire-mitigation-efforts-work-in-lehigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2012\/05\/fire-mitigation-efforts-work-in-lehigh\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire Mitigation
Efforts Work In Lehigh"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Florida Forest Service said its mitigation efforts are working. For the past three years, the agency has been fighting fires in some of the most high-risk areas of Southwest Florida by preventing them.<\/p>\n

Bulldozers plow through palmettos four days a week in Lehigh Acres. Its part of a three-year pilot program fronted by Florida Forest Service to cut down the number of wildfires by chopping brush back, before flames flare up.<\/p>\n

“We saw that really as soon as the work began, the number of wildfires in these areas where we’ve chopped has dropped pretty dramatically,” Victor Hill of Florida Forest Service said.<\/p>\n

FFS now has the data to prove the system works. Before mitigation teams got moving, they responded to 40 brush fires, burning 163 acres in one of their Lehigh Acres high-fire threat zones. After clearing out the area, there were 24 fires in 2011, covering just 22 acres.<\/p>\n

“It saves people money in terms of response and the amount of resources that we need. Most importantly, it keeps people safe from these wildfires,” Hill said.<\/p>\n

Money for the prevention program is expected to dry up in September. State Representative Matt Caldwell is fighting for more funding.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
State Representative
Matt Caldwell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“It’s a real threat every year, year in and year out to the property owners out there,” Caldwell said Monday.<\/p>\n

Governor Rick Scott vetoed further funding during the last legislative session. Now, Caldwell says it’s time to look locally to keep crews at work.<\/p>\n

“It may be that we need to look for ways to stretch out dollar back home. Reallocate our priorities, and be able to fund this effort,” Caldwell said.<\/p>\n

State Rep. Caldwell said Lehigh Acres Fire & Rescue will likely take over the prevention efforts if funding dries up. He said one proposal to pay for it is to change the way taxes are collected. One idea is to collect tax based on the size of a piece of property, rather than its value.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida Forest Service said its mitigation efforts are working. For the past three years, the agency has been fighting fires in some of the most high-risk areas of Southwest Florida… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}