Fire Destroys at Least 43 Homes in Florida

A 545-acre blaze fueled by wind and aided by 2 1/2 months of drought destroyed at least 43 homes and damaged 33 others near this East Coast city, officials said Friday.

Officials had been aggressive about containing even the smallest fire, but it was such a blaze, thought under control, that took Port St. Lucie by storm Thursday night.

Hundreds of people were forced to evacuate their homes, and some returned Friday to piles of charred ruins.

“I don’t even have a fork. I have nothing,” one resident said outside the remains of her house.

Authorities in St. Lucie County kept watch for looters and warned residents of unlicensed contractors who might prey on their desperate situation. A curfew was being enforced from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Residents complained about the lack of resources to battle the flames. The area does not have fire hydrants and when Florida Power & Light cut power Friday to 6,000 homes--afraid of live wires burning--it cut electricity to well pumps. Some residents were forced to bale water from their pools in a bucket brigade to drench flames as they neared homes.

“There was just so much I could’ve done. No power, no water. If I had had water I could’ve taken care of it myself, “ said Clifford Newland, who lost his home, his pickup truck and his car.

Marilyn Nieves held the charred figurine of an angel in her hands, the only thing left of her possessions.

Cupping the angel, a gift from her goddaughter, in her hands, she said, “I don’t know whether it’s just something from God. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t understand how it occurred.”

It began raining at dusk Friday and thunderstorms were expected today for the Port St. Lucie area, where firefighters kept the upper hand on the smoldering blaze.

Two helicopters and two 3,000-gallon tank planes assaulted the smoldering landscape from the air with water.

“Right now, we have it pretty well contained,” said Lt. Ron Parrish of St. Lucie County Fire District.

Florida stepped up its prescribed burning after last year’s devastating blazes to rid neighborhoods of brush. No such preventive measures were taken in the wooded St. Lucie neighborhood of $90,000 and $120,000 homes just west of the city that is the spring training home of the New York Mets.

“That particular area . . . is kind of a poster example of danger of having structures so intermingled in the woods,” said Terry McElroy, spokesman for the state Agriculture Department. “You have houses in the middle of the woods on top of one another.”

“The nature of some of these forests, with the amount of undergrowth leaves and pine needles, they can burn underground for weeks and weeks,” he said. “They are thought extinguished but reignite when the wind kicks up.”