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Weather offers hope in battle with flames By CHASE SQUIRES, THOMAS C. TOBIN, PETER WALLSTEN and ADAM C. SMITH © St. Petersburg Times, published July 5, 1998
"Today we're fighting fires," Chiles said Saturday as he toured a subdivision in Palm Coast where several homes were destroyed and a few flames were still visible. "Yesterday we were running from them." Illustrating the fickle nature of wildfires near the coast, Saturday evening's optimism followed the destruction of at least 23 homes in Flagler County's Palm Coast development. Engine companies found themselves battling flames street-to-street as Friday became Saturday before the sea breeze pushed flames the other direction and humidity returned to slow the fire. Fireworks displays in every city in east-central Florida were canceled Saturday. But as night fell, authorities worried about the prospect of illegal fireworks sparking more fires. Already, more than 450,000 acres of Florida have burned over the past month, and state leaders are praying for cooperative weather. "We're turning the tide today and if the weather persists we'll be able to cool these fires down. Then I think we can say we turned the tide," said Ray Geiger, chief of field operations for the Division of Forestry. However, he added, "Until we get persistent high humidity with periodic rain, there's a threat." A slim hope of that has popped up in the Caribbean Sea where a tropical wave with the potential for development has formed. It is moving west, but is still too far away from the mainland for forecasters to know when -- or if -- it will come to Florida. State officials Saturday gave their first estimate of the economic damage since the fires started burning more than a month ago: at least $500-million in lost timber, crops, livestock and business to fireworks vendors shut down when Chiles banned private fireworks sales. The figure does not include the value of some 200 homes and businesses destroyed. Nor does it include the financial losses to hotel and motel owners and other businesses affected by tourism or the postponement of Saturday night's stock car race in Daytona Beach. Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson, who also acts as the state's fire marshal, said the costs could be a lot higher. And, when the fires are finally extinguished, the state will be responsible for paying one-fourth of the costs incurred by out-of-state workers fighting the blazes -- an amount Chiles could not predict Saturday. Reinforcements are pouring into the hot zone. In the area including northern Volusia County, Flagler and St. Johns, for example, the number of emergency workers was expected to more than double over the weekend, said Steve Gage, a fire official from Kern County in California who leads one of 17 national incident management teams. Seven of those teams are now in Florida. Saturday morning, the fire corridor Gage commands had 600 personnel. By tonight, 1,500 are expected, he said. "We're dug in, and we'll be here to the end," Gage said. Several helicopters, a transport plane from California carrying fire tankers and engines and a shipment of tractors from Texas all arrived Saturday. With the fires calmed somewhat along the coast, firefighters got tough Saturday and tried to get ahead of their nemesis. They dug trenches 150 feet to 200 feet wide. They doused the flames on one side and in some cases burned land on the other, trying to make sure the fires would go no farther. A trip through Palm Coast reveals the strategy firefighters have settled on for fighting the blazes in residential areas. They carefully let the fires burn through the surrounding woods to the edges of the road and the edges of each property -- visitors can see homes almost outlined -- charred woods come right up against bright green St. Augustine grass. Before, when they saw a fire in the woods and tried to put it out, four hours later, they'd be back. Now, they let it burn the underbrush -- using up fuel -- and use resources only when it actually gets close to a house. Mandatory evacuation orders remained in effect for Flagler County Saturday night, and an estimated 90 percent of the county's 45,000 residents cooperated. The definition of mandatory evacuation? "It basically means if you're not going to leave, give me the name of your next of kin," Flagler Sheriff Robert E. McCarthy said. "We don't have time to stand there and argue with people." Residents outside Flagler spent a gloomy Fourth of July cleaning up and assessing the damage. "It's a holiday? I keep forgetting today's the Fourth of July," Kristie Lambert said as she prepared to return home to Mims in Brevard County. "It's been a long week." In one of the hardest hit areas near the Brevard County town of Mims, Ruth Shields mourned the loss of dozens of exotic chickens she raised in her yard. On Wednesday, Shields, 55, barely escaped with her life as fire enveloped the woods around her house. "I was outside just putting out spot fires when all my geese just went crazy. I looked up and everything around me was on fire," she said. Shields got in her car and crashed through the metal gates at the end of her driveway. "I took one look back, and I just knew my house was gone." Fire killed or severely injured more than half of her 45 chickens and charred her lawn, but firefighters saved her home. Gov. Chiles, who was scheduled to be on vacation in North Carolina for July Fourth, arrived in Flagler County on a helicopter after flying through thick smoke from fires still burning in western Volusia County. He shook hands and thanked firefighters from around the nation who are helping Florida officials battle the blazes. "My prayers are continuing," said Chiles, who last week asked Floridians to pray for rain. "I asked the Lord and he sent the sea breeze." Chiles has made emergency preparedness a centerpiece of his administration since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Then, coordination between state and federal management teams was a disaster in itself, leaving elected officials open to harsh criticism from victims of the storm. Now, Florida has its state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center, where state agencies can coordinate their efforts with federal officials. James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, spent most of Friday in Tallahassee with Chiles helping to direct the fire fighting and evacuation efforts. In Flagler County on Saturday, Chiles and Insurance Commissioner Nelson toured the Princess Place Reserve, a century-old hunting lodge-turned-public park that managed to survive the fire without help from firefighters. Instead, county officials say, it was safe thanks to years of "prescribed burning," a controversial wildfire-prevention tactic in which underbrush and other types of fuel are burned every few years with controlled fires. Nelson said the state should encourage more prescribed burning. "We ought to look at it," he said. "If we got to the point that it would protect against the loss of lives and property in the urban (areas), it could be worth it." Charred pine forest surrounded the Indian Trails subdivision in Palm Coast where Chiles stopped Saturday. Three homes there had been destroyed. At one lot on Brownstone Lane, charred metal -- a water heater, washer and dryer, filing cabinet and the shells of a car and a motorcycle -- stood alone, with no signs of walls or a roof around them. Capt. Mike Beadle of Palm Coast Fire Rescue stood in front of the house. It was lost to the same fire he fought two days before two miles away. He described a wall of fire and smoke that arched overhead. "You don't see it coming. You hear it coming," he said. "Once it got to that point, we left." Firefighters in the company said it sounded like a waterfall.
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fter one of the most difficult nights since Florida's wildfires
began a month ago, Independence Day brought weary emergency crews
some breathing room and hope.
