South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Smoke, fog advisories issued near Lake Okeechobee

By Robert Nolin and Andrew Ba Tran

May 7, 2008

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-flbsmoke0507sbmay07,0,6968942.story

The National Weather Service has issued a dense fog advisory for inland Palm Beach County and a dense smoke advisory for southeast Glades County and northeast Hendry County.

"Visibilities over the northern interior areas of South Florida will remain below one quarter of a mile in smoke and fog through the mid-morning hours," the weather service said.

The advisories are expected to end at 9 a.m.

Many South Florida residents, especially in Palm Beach County, woke up Tuesday morning and gasped.

A section of drought-ravaged Lake Okeechobee, which normally should be underwater, was ablaze. Smoke from the 4,000-acre fire, shoved east by the wind, shrouded the region, irritating eyes and throats and prompting health officials to sound advisories.

"It was almost like a fog, a light fog, in a lot of areas," said Tim O'Connor, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Health Department. "We got a lot of calls. Everybody wanted to know what was going on. They were coughing, having irritated eyes."

O'Connor cautioned folks with respiratory ailments, asthma or allergies to stay indoors. Candy Sims, spokeswoman for the Broward County Health Department, said there were no reported incidents of smoke-related illness Tuesday. "We only got one call from a day care. They were asking if it was OK for the kids to go outside," she said. "We recommended they did not until the air cleared."

Offshore breezes scattered the smoke by mid-afternoon. But between 8 and 10 a.m. in Broward County, air quality monitors detected 36 micrograms of particle pollution per cubic meter. An average day's reading is nine to 10 , said Monica Pognon, a specialist with the county's air quality program.

The culprit was two Lake Okeechobee fires, which stretch 5 1/2 miles, separated by a canal, on the dry lake bed. The blazes started late Thursday and early Friday, possibly by arson, officials said, and are consuming dry aquatic vegetation in the lake's southwest quarter between Clewiston and Moore Haven.

For more than year the lake has been baked by persistent drought, and water levels are 3 feet below average. With the fire barely moving, it has burned away much of the surface fuel and is starting to chew into sediment below. Officials expect it to become a long-lasting muck fire, smoldering the dry, peat-like lake bottom.

"They could go for months," said Melissa Yunas with the Florida Division of Forestry. "A muck fire only goes out when there's enough water to put it out."

In other words, rain.

"I still think we're a couple of weeks away from any rain," said Bill Berry, also with the forestry division.

But while the lake fires rage, their smoke shouldn't torment this region's residents, at least not today. Overnight winds from the south should push the smoke to the north, said Bob Ebaugh, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami-Dade County.

Smoke lingered in Debbie Boswell's Belle Glade apartment Tuesday morning, and from her window she could view the haze over Lake Okeechobee. She took it all in stride. "I live in the Glades," she said, "so I'm used to stuff like that."

Staff Writer Jerome Burdi contributed to this report.

Robert Nolin can be reached at rnolin@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4525.