[Sharleen]

        and supposedly out of control, only really hurting Royalton - all their restaurants and outdoor bars had to shut down, I'm going to try and post a picture

[oldtimer]

fire brings new life . It's only " deemed " to be out of control because people live and work there . If nobody was there it would become presteen again in no time at all .Natures way of getting rid of the trash .

[JonTom]

Interesting timing. In the past, I've only seen the morass fire during drought, or at least very dry, conditions. Pretty sure Westmoreland/Hanover have been having flood warnings of late.

We've been told the morass spontaneously combusts. Repeating that to others later, we were met with laughter... "right, spontaneous ganga farmer lighting up the swamp, you mean".

They actually had pictures of a huge fire in the morass in the newspaper (Observer, I think) a few years ago. Surprised me given the Sandals-Observer connection (B. Stewart) as I don't think most tourists relish the idea of smoke & ash (or relocating out of a fire's path). Perhaps the story was intended to give authorities some urgency to protect property.

Agree somewhat with OT, at least to the extent that building on the East (non-shore) side of the road is a bad idea.

[Aquavit]

It is a completely natural and common occurrence for the Morass to burn. As mentioned, Fire is nature's way of rebuilding itself. The picture posted looks exactly like every Morass fire I've witnessed (maybe a tad closer to the "center of things" than usual?) but I think the reason its getting any attention is because of how its affecting the Royalton. I lived through the wildfires in Northern California last fall and its not pleasant - thick smoke, ash everywhere...but I'm confident this will get under control soon enough. Just needing a good hard rain.

[Sharleen]

People there are concerned about this one because it's so different than all the other many many morass fires - there has been lots and lots of rain over the past month.  As Jon Tom notes, they usually start naturally after a dry period.  And this one supposedly covered way more land than it has ever done in the past, partly I suppose because of the winds yesterday.  

[Aquavit]

I learned more than I ever wanted to know about wildfires having been through the wildfires in Northern California last fall.

We had record rainfall that winter too. The problem with that is that so much fuel grows and dries out it makes for a terrible fire season. High winds are problematic too and is what helped cause the vast destruction in Sonoma and Napa counties, the likes of which the state of California had never seen before.

I'm cautious about ringing the hysteria bell on this mainly because I have heard NOTHING from my friends there that is at all alarming. One of the sad parts of the overdevelopment of the beach is how its affected this huge ecosystem negatively, literally drying out the wetlands.

As of right now I have not heard a peep about evacuations or this fire damaging homes or businesses on the morass side of the road. I was 20 miles from the fire line in Santa Rosa and at times the smoke was thick near my house and I either didn't go out or I put on a mask.

Hopefully the area will get a good blast of rain that will tamper down the fire.

[HighPot]

OMG, what a terrible news.