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April 23, 2007

Okefenokee Burning, Where's The Media?

 
Wildfire has burned 55,000 acres of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. The acreage represents more than 10% of total land area of the refuge.

What I find interesting about the coverage is the lack of journalistic effort put forth by traditional media. Take a look at the news search results for the incident. On Google News there are 234 news articles on the fire but really nearly all are copies from one or two main distributors like Gannett and the AP.

Bloggers more often are providers of fire ground level information but for this incident the blog results mirror the web search news results.
I don't know the ground there, maybe it's just swamp but 18 homes were lost or scorched so you would think there are some human interest stories and stories from firefighters on the ground.

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Posted by: retired cap mike: 9:47 AM


Comments:
I'm with you my friend. i hear you. I'm about 15 miles east of the fire and its getting pretty bad. donations are running low so i'm trying to pool up some money to ride them out there myself. If you are interested in helping let me know. chevy_killin_f150@hotmail.com
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : May 03, 2007 12:10 PM
 
Best of luck Bill. I'm curious why you need donations. Are you unable to get to work? What's the story?
# posted by Blogger Mike : May 03, 2007 12:16 PM
 
Fire is actually natural to these ecosystems. It burns out the understory and most of the pine trees survive it. There are controlled burn policies in most Coastal Plain state forests and wildlife refuges. This is an extreme case, however, where more contiguous area than normal is on fire and the ground is so dry that it is persisting underground for weeks on end.
# posted by Blogger Don Thieme : May 03, 2007 6:00 PM
 
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