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He's the field marshal for firefightersBy GEOFF DOUGHERTY © St. Petersburg Times, published July 2, 1998 Burwell commands firefighting operations in this, the hardest-hit corner of a state in flames. Armed with a map studded with Post-It notes marking the newest and worst blazes, Burwell intercepts reports and ponders questions with no clear answers: Which fires could send hundreds of families out of their homes? Which could blaze harmlessly through brushland? When and where will the wind whip up? Will it ever rain? Where are hundreds of firefighters going to sleep this weekend when race fans pour into Daytona Beach and claim their long-reserved hotel rooms for the Pepsi 400? Above all, there's the worry that nags constantly at Burwell: "The fire gets out and starts running and we can't stop it." Burwell, 38, came here from his home in North Carolina nearly two weeks ago to command operations in what is now known as the Bunnell Complex: Flagler, St. Johns and Volusia counties. So far, fires in that area have chewed through more than 24,000 acres of forest, damaged 46 homes, and injured a dozen people. No lives have been lost. The statewide command post in Tallahassee has the benefit of computers that predict fire behavior and assemble weather statistics. Out here, Burwell uses equipment that hasn't changed much since the 1940s. Some of the planes that drop water on the Bunnell Complex dropped bombs during World War II. The firefighters tear through the brush with plows that normally prepare fields for planting. Burwell commands 400 firefighters who toil in unimaginable conditions. One firefighter on a bulldozer was trapped by a wall of flame that washed over her. Amazingly, she wasn't burned. But all those firefighters aren't nearly enough for the job. These fires have gone on so long, the firefighters no longer call the days by their usual names. Tuesday, for instance, was not Tuesday. It was Day 26. On that day, like all his days, Burwell reported to the command center, a wood-sided structure that looks like it belongs in a down-at-the-heels summer camp, at 6 a.m. Most of Burwell's worries were directed toward the Rodeo Road fire, a 13,000-acre blaze near Bunnell in Flagler County. Firefighters had already used bulldozers to corral the fire, and they were counting on an afternoon ocean breeze to finish their work. At 1:30 p.m., one of his team leaders calls. The fire has jumped the line, flinging embers into the unburned woods. A weather report is no help. "Keep your head up," Burwell tells the supervisor. "We ain't going to get that sea breeze today. Do the best you can do." In the air operations room, he goes over plans for containing the Rodeo blaze. If the wind doesn't shift, Burwell fears, a subdivision could go up in flames. "When it hits that line it ain't going to stop," he says. The plan is to wait until sundown, when the breeze calms, then set a backfire. When the main blaze hits the land already charred by that man-made fire, it will starve. Then, a Canadian water tanker will drench the area. "Just wet-line the s--- out if it," says Ted Hass, the air dispatcher. Simple command. But nothing here is simple. The tanker pilots won't fly unless all of the other planes in the area clear out. Losing those craft will leave more flare-ups untended. Meanwhile, Burwell is called to the dispatch office. "We've got a fire up and running," says Bill Hodges, another supervisor. With his limited forces, Burwell must choose between bad and worse. Pulling crews away from Rodeo risks losing everything they've gained in the past week. But ignoring a new fire allows it to grow. Burwell sends a tractor team. "It's going to take them an hour and a half to get there, but that's all I can do," he says. Later, another fire flares up. A crew leader asks for bulldozers. "Where do you think I'm going to come up with that strike team?" he asks. "Pull it out of my hat?" A pair of local firefighters arrives. Their radios don't work with those used by Burwell's North Carolina team. Can they borrow some radios? That's forbidden by state rules. But Burwell knows the men have got to communicate. He gives them the radios. By 5 p.m., the wind from the west calms. Lightning cracks through the sky. At the south end of the Rodeo fire, a dozer supervisor prays for a thunderstorm as he watches a family of wild turkeys flee the smoke. When the storm comes, it offers little rain but enough lightning to start dozens of small wildfires. This forces Burwell to cancel that backfire. At midnight, Burwell gives the order to put out some of those small blazes. And he completes strategy for the next day. The day ends with the fire in almost exactly the same place Burwell found it when he arrived 18 hours ago. "I think we had a successful day," he says. "The Rodeo fire held its own today. But we kept it from getting any bigger."
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UNNELL -- Every minute of every 18-hour day, Lee Burwell struggles to avert disaster.
