Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
If you haven’t been burning outdoors because you thought that a burn ban was in effect, consider yourself ahead of the curve, as a ban is now in place.
On Thursday evening, April 16, at the request of Fire Chief Derrick Burrus, the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners adopted a resolution declaring a burn ban, effective immediately.
“It’s dry,” Burrus said understatedly when asked to cite the reason for the requested ban.
On a more serious note, he offered that the 10 counties to the west of Jefferson County presently had burn bans. As did the seven counties to the east, he added. Frankly speaking, Jefferson County had been holding out, he said.
He reminded the board that the county had enacted a burn ban in January at his request.
“The state wasn't happy with it,” Burrus said, “but we looked at the conditions and we called it like we saw it. At the time, we were fighting fires every day.”
Fortunately, he said, that wasn’t the case presently, as the one wildfire that the department had responded to had been a permitted burn that had gotten out of control. Because his department had not been responding to fires, Jefferson hadn’t really been edging toward a ban, he said. However, the reality was that the situation was dire, he said.
“It’s as bad as it’s been since the state was on fire,” Burrus said, referring to 1998, when wildfires erupted across Florida between May and early July and reportedly burned more than 500,000 acres, destroyed hundreds of houses and required a massive emergency response.
Therefore, in the interest of public safety, he was asking for a ban to be declared, he said.
“I will say that most people believe there already is a ban in place,” Burrus said, adding that one local news channel still had Jefferson County listed as having a ban from before.
The present resolution, he said, would make the listing be correct.
Florida has been unusually dry for much of 2025, with the drought’s intensity ratcheting up since January 2026, according to data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, as reported by NASA and the German Research Center for Geosciences.
Generally considered among the wettest U.S. states, nearly all of Florida has faced at minimum a “moderate” drought, and about 80% has faced “extreme” conditions in April.
“Unusually dry conditions gripped the state for much of 2025, but the intensity and extent of the drought ratcheted up starting in January 2026,” the NASA website states.
The drought has moreover left its imprint on the state's underground water supplies, which often are tapped for drinking water and farming, according to the data. Aquifers in the northern and central regions of the state are particularly dry.
As a consequence, some water districts have imposed restrictions as to when water can be used for certain activities, such as lawn watering and car washes. The dry weather also poses a threat to crops, many of which were damaged during hard freezes in February, according to the NASA website. Meanwhile, large wildland fires have flared up in some areas of the state.
Records from the U.S. Drought Monitor indicate that the current drought is the most widespread and severe to affect the state since 2012, with many areas receiving less than half their normal rainfall since Sept. 1, 2025, the National Weather Service reports.
The silver lining is that the drought so far is not equal to the more intense and longer lasting drought that parched the state in 2000-2001. Forecasters expect that relief in the form of rain may not be far off.