Fires Level 150 Homes in Florida : 100,000 Acres in 29 Counties Burned in ‘Major Disaster’

Wildfires raged across 100,000 acres of Florida brushland Saturday, destroying at least 150 homes, forcing hundreds to flee and leaving the state “in the throes of a major disaster,” officials said.

Two firefighters died in the three-day battle to contain the fires, and three other persons, including two forest rangers, were injured. Highways and communications were cut off.

“This is the most devastating fire in the modern history of Florida,” Gov. Bob Graham said after making an aerial tour of the burning woodlands. “Already, 130 to 140 homes have been destroyed.”

But the sheriff of the hardest hit county, Flagler, said that 150 homes had been destroyed in his area alone.

State of Emergency

Graham declared a state of emergency Saturday after mobilizing the National Guard to aid exhausted firefighters, some of whom had been on the job for 38 consecutive hours.

The blazes, blamed on arson and abnormally dry conditions in the state, have been burning off and on for about a week but grew to major proportions early Friday. The causes of the fires had not been determined in most cases, although officials said that arson caused at least two of them. Arson, lightning and accidents are believed to have contributed to the others.

Fires were burning Saturday in 29 of Florida’s 67 counties, but the winds had slackened, improving the situation.

But Al Simmons, a spokesman for the state Division of Forestry in Tallahassee, said: “It’s bigger than anything we’ve ever seen before. We can’t even count them all. Our best guess is that 100,000 acres are burning.”

Cover 100-Mile Strip

Seven fires covered a 100-mile strip along Florida’s central Atlantic Coast from Daytona Beach to Titusville. The biggest of those fires covered 12,000 acres and created a huge cloud of smoke that forced the highway patrol to close parts of Interstate 95.

“The smoke is so bad we can’t even get in there,” a Volusia County sheriff’s dispatcher said.

“The state is in the throes of a major disaster with wildfires,” said Paul Wills of the state Division of Forestry headquarters. “From Cape Canaveral up to St. Augustine, you can count seven or eight huge fires, including two of 5,000 and more acres.

“We’re expecting a hard time with it this afternoon,” Wills said. “It’s not totally surrounded with fire lines. Wind from the west will blow it into many houses.”

At least 150 houses, worth $90,000 and more, were destroyed in the Flagler County area south of St. Augustine known as Palm Coast, county Sheriff Robert McCarthy said. “That’s on the conservative side,” he added.

Power lines and phone service were knocked out throughout Flagler County. One Florida Power & Light worker estimated that the fire knocked down as many as 300 poles.

State and county officers toured the Palm Coast neighborhood, searching burned-out remains of houses where only water heaters, refrigerators and skeletons of cars were recognizable.

Evacuees, including 135 families who spent the night at a school, were unable to obtain information about the fire or the homes they left hurriedly Friday afternoon. Police were awaiting removal of downed lines before allowing residents to return.

“Flames were shooting up in the trees,” said Roy Corbin, who turned on yard sprinklers before he left his house in the Palm Coast Belle Terre neighborhood. “It would be a miracle if it made it.”

Hundreds of residents of this 3,000-home area spent Friday night in hotels or Red Cross emergency centers.

In Christmas, a tiny town whose postmark is famous, a 7,000-acre fire was raging.

In Volusia County, some residents were evacuated from areas outside Ormond Beach, New Smyrna Beach and Daytona Beach.

4,000-Acre Blaze

One of the largest fires, covering 4,000 acres just outside Perry in Taylor County, was contained Saturday afternoon, Taylor County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Deen Chambers said.

Firefighter Robert Tabor, 50, died late Thursday in a blaze that burned 1,000 acres of prime North Florida timberland. Near the town of Navarre in the Florida Panhandle, firefighter Randall Garrett, 49, died Friday night of a heart attack while battling a blaze.

Firefighters reported at least 109 fires, 19 of them major, burning about 60,000 acres across the state Friday, said Simmons of the state forestry division.

By Saturday, 60 fires were still burning, and forestry officials said about 20 were contained. The rest were still burning out of control.

Many exhausted firefighters have had little or no rest, with no hope of any in the near future.

“There are no replacements. People have been hollering: ‘Send us more men. Send us more equipment.’ We’ve gotten bulldozers from the National Guard,” Wills said.

National Guard helicopters dropped water and flame-retardant chemicals on the flames. Firefighters worked frantically to clear away underbrush and dig fire lines in anticipation of Saturday winds that were expected to refuel the flames and ignite still more fires.

Fire Lanes ‘a Gamble’

“We’re trying to outguess the weather and figure where the winds will push the fire,” Simmons said. “Sometimes we can use the fire lanes to push the fire into an area of low risk, but it’s a gamble.”

A blaze in northwest Florida forced the evacuation of 50 to 60 homes in the town of Perry and many grasslands fires in southwest Florida threatened mainly rural areas in Lee, Charlotte and Collier counties.

In Broward County in South Florida, a fire covering 20,000 acres continued to burn, but its spread had been halted Saturday morning, Wills said.

That blaze was blamed for a power outage that brought South Florida to a halt for three hours Friday afternoon when it overheated a major power feed line and cut off electricity to 4.5 million persons.