BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Emergency response teams across the country are working to assist California with the destructive wildfires.

In Florida, work is ongoing to help reduce the risks of wildfires in our own state.

Officials with the Florida Forest Service said they’re actively working on prescribed burns to help minimize the risk through forestry management because Florida has the risk of wildfires year-round. The goal is to reduce the amount of fuel available for them to get out of control.

The latest burn was in Sebastian this week at the North Sebastian Conservation Area in Indian River County.

“It’s called a prescribed fire for a reason," said Florida Forest Service Mitigation Specialist David grouch. "It’s just like a doctor writes a prescription to treat you. We write a prescription to treat the land."

Over a two-day period, officers intentionally burned nearly 1,000 acres very close to homes and businesses in downtown Sebastian in a spot known as an urban interface.

The purpose of the burn was to reduce vegetation that could catch fire naturally or by man, and, in this case, open up the area to allow scrub jays to return and continue their species.

“We are also doing mitigation work too, by mitigating the same area, and by reducing the fuel loading, there’s less chance of a wildfire out here,” Grubich said.

He said the challenge is Florida’s landscape being a tropical ecosystem, meaning the vegetation is meant to burn.

And certain plant species need fire to burn away ground cover so they can grow and thrive.

The prescribed burns take away that fuel so there is nowhere for the fires caused by nature or people to move and spread.

One thing to note about the difference in the risk right now with what is going on in California are the Santa Ana winds.

Those high winds are helping to spread wildfires faster, something FFS officials say is why it’s so important to conduct year-round fire mitigation.

“In Florida what we do is pretty unique to manage fire,” Grubich said.