> I don't know if any of you have caught this little tidbit of news online or on the television, but right now, southern Georgia (in particular, the Okeefenokee National Wildlife Preserve) and north Florida, (Baker, Bradford, Duval counties, in addition to others) are ... how should we say... on fire. Such a fact wouldn't be too shocking, except that this has gone on for almost 3 weeks now!
>
> I don't know exactly what's going on. I mean, I trust the the firefighters are working as hard as they can. But this fire keeps on spreading. It's weakened, according to the local newspapers, but it's still a-moving.
>
> I just wanted to say that you all have a fellow Rinkie down here in Good ol' Macclenny, Florida, which has enough smoke outside right now to look like London's fog. (The fire is approx. 10 - 15 miles NW of us). I have every belief that the fire will be put out well before it reaches us, but I just wanted to let you know that if you read something about this fire in the news (Macclenny or Baker County, Florida), I'm down here in the middle of it... and probably playing adventure games live.
>
>
> Daniel
> dburn13579

Swamp fires present some very different problems.
First, fire trucks can't drive through a swamp. Even boats run into problems where vegetation keep them from reaching the fire. Dropping water from airplanes on a wet place is not very effective.

I remember back in the 1950's when the swamps in southern Florida caught fire and we had smoky skies for weeks. People who were out there fighting the fires said that layers of peat below the surface was smoldering and that in some places it was smoldering under water. They said you could see smoke-filled bubbles coming to the surface. To make matters worse, snakes and alligators were trying to get away from the heat and smoke and were very agressive.

I know what you are thinking. How can layers of peat burn below the surface where there is limited oxygen? They said it was smoldering very slowly. Heat could not escape very easily, so the temperature stayed high enough to keep the peat at or near it's combustion temperature until oxygen became available. Digging up the peat made it burn furiously.

They never got it under control. It just burned itself out.
Howard