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ALM COAST -- Susan Mitri drove her Jeep Cherokee into her upscale
Flagler County neighborhood Monday morning, relieved to be home
after a weekend evacuation.
| Florida on fire More coverage from the pages of the St. Petersburg Times. |
"That was my house," she gasped.
The white stucco walls were burned black. The chimney was bent, on the verge of collapse. All that remained intact was a sign out front that said "For Sale by Owner."
The wildfires that have rampaged across Florida since Memorial Day had claimed another victim.
On Friday the flames sent an estimated 45,000 people scurrying out of Flagler County under a mandatory evacuation order. But over the weekend firefighters gained the upper hand with the help of high humidity and scattered thundershowers.
At 9 a.m. Monday officials announced that Flagler residents could go home. Cars and trucks stuffed with pillows, playpens and suitcases streamed back into subdivisions that showed the scars of the weekend's battle.
The returning evacuees found acres of blackened woodlands. They found ashen lawns where a walk through the grass sounded like crushing potato chips.
And a few, like Mitri, found that they had lost everything. Officials said at least 46 homes in Flagler County were destroyed and another 179 were damaged, but they were still checking neighborhoods to get a more accurate count.
Most of the returning evacuees were like Mitri's next-door neighbor, Paul Economou. Although the fires crept close enough to melt the edges of his roof, his house in the Matanzas Woods subdivision was pretty much the way he left it.
When he saw the place still standing, he said, "I nearly started crying. I was blessed."
Late Monday in Pasco County, wildfires burned about 1,200 acres before firefighters brought them under control.
As Flagler residents returned, neighbors ran up and hugged each other. Stores that had been shuttered for days stocked up on milk and bread, expecting a flood of customers. The luckier residents joked about changing their town's name to "Palm Toast."
Jason Powell and his fiancee, Melissa Ballenger, both 26, did not feel like joking. A month ago they rented a two-bedroom house. Now the 50 or 60 boxes they had yet to unpack were just ashes.
Before fleeing the fires the couple had jammed their two cars with their computer, TV, stereo, pictures and clothes. But they had no room for their important papers, so they left them behind, stuffed into the refrigerator. On Monday they discovered the refrigerator didn't make it. Neither did the papers inside. Neither did much else in their house, and they had no renter's insurance. Powell was philosophical.
"We're young," he said. "We can start over."
The path of destruction from the fires was as haphazard as a tornado, leaving one house demolished while sparing others all around it.
The fires flattened Marie and Chuck Chiaramonte's house and left their car burned to a crisp. But somehow "a Chia pet in a box survived," Mrs. Chiaramonte said. "Can you believe that?"
Smoke still blanketed the county, and around Matanzas Woods a few embers flickered and flared. Ten-year-old Jordan Scudder pedaled around the neighborhood carrying a bucket of water, looking for small fires in the woods.
"Bless his heart," said neighbor Vicky Norris, as the boy doused some hot spots.
As the day wore on, a steady stream of vehicles filled the newly reopened roadways, including Interstate 95, the main north-south artery on Florida's east coast. Jodee Motsinger, who ignored the evacuation order and stayed in Bunnell, said some of the returning residents were a tad too enthusiastic. "These people are nuts coming in," she said. "They're driving on the wrong side of the road."
Some homeowners were angry at the loss of the lush growth of palmettos and pines that had been the main reason for their moving to Flagler County in the first place. Some were upset that their neighborhoods had been plowed up by bulldozers to create firebreaks.
But most residents were grateful for the efforts of firefighters from around the state and the country. In Mantanzas Woods one homeowner hung out an old towel that said, "God bless our firefighters and everyone."
Although the residents were allowed to return, life was still not quite back to normal. Law enforcement and military vehicles set up roadblocks at subdivision entrances and let in only homeowners, disaster officials and reporters. Television trucks were barred, and the county remained under a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Crews from Florida Power & Light trucked in new power poles to replace ones that were smoldering.
By early afternoon it began to rain, promising further relief. But emergency officials warned that in Flagler, as in hard-hit Volusia and Brevard counties, a change in the wind or weather could make the wildfires flare up again.
Arson could change the odds too: In the past two weeks six children have been charged with setting or trying to set small fires.
So far, there has not been enough rain to squelch the blazes burning through unpopulated forest areas. A tropical disturbance in the Caribbean between Jamaica and Honduras is not expected to bring any relief beyond the normal summertime thundershowers. About 2,000 wildfires have consumed nearly half a million acres across the state since Memorial Day, damaging or destroying 301 homes and other structures and injuring more than 100 people, many of them firefighters. One death has been reported: a man who suffered a heart attack during Friday's evacuation.
The cost of fighting the fires has topped $116-million, and the losses -- to homes, businesses and especially timber companies -- have been estimated at $276-million. The Federal Emergency Management Agency opened a disaster office in Tallahassee to administer assistance programs. So far, 650 people have registered for federal aid, about a third of them seeking housing assistance.
Although the east coast has been given a breather, other parts of Florida weren't faring so well. In the Panhandle's Bay County, three fires had burned together into a 600-acre blaze, while one home burned down in southwest Florida's Collier County. A new fire also was reported in the Ocala National Forest near Fort McCoy.
The fires in Pasco County that consumed 1,200 acres were apparently started by lighting. Firefighters from the state Division of Forestry and the Moon Lake and Magnolia Valley volunteer fire departments were fighting the fires, which spread smoke and haze over much of western Pasco.
President Clinton planned to visit Volusia County on Thursday.
But Flagler's fire victims were already seeing their most anticipated visitor Monday. About an hour after officials let residents return, insurance adjusters fanned out to assess the damage.
State Farm's Dean Klingensmith of St. Petersburg stopped at what was left of April and Rhon Dixon's house. Only a satellite dish remained. April Dixon wondered how she would explain the devastation to her 2-year-old son, who was tired of sleeping in a bed that was not his own.
"He woke up and said, "Mommy, I want to go home,' " she said.
"I didn't know what to say."
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