January 30, 2023 – Flagler County Fire Rescue continues to provide mutual aid to the Florida Forest Service and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection – the lead response agencies – for an extremely dense mulch fire in Favoretta that has been burning for two months. The property owner has been dismantling the large pile to create smaller, less dense piles that will be easier to extinguish.
The fire, which started at 1 acre, is now about 1/3 of an acre.
“This is a very dangerous procedure – pulling apart this fire,” said Flagler County Fire Rescue Mike Tucker. “This fire is very compact and very hot. There can be ‘caverns’ where the material has burnt. It can be tricky to navigate with equipment.”
With guidance from the Florida Forest Service, Flagler County Fire Rescue and the property owner will be working in conjunction to extinguish this fire.
“Not every fire is easy to extinguish, and we have to take care to ensure that we don’t make things worse,” Tucker said. “We act as expeditiously as possible, but we have to consider public safety.”
The fire started about noon on November 26 at 295 County Road 200 – Arrow Materials, a company that collects brush to convert to mulch.
“There was a lot of material on the property, all of which are fuels for fire,” Tucker said.
