July 5, 1998
Tomorrow will be one month ago the first fire was here in St. Johns County.
It was a Saturday, and we drove out to see it. We could have never imagined that things we had never seen before that day would so soon become so familiar. Helicopters with water buckets, flat bed trucks laden with bulldozers, fire trucks, fleeing traffic, and smoke. So much smoke.
Since that day, no other fires have been so close to town. But a week later, fire along I-95 closed it down, sending thousands and thousands of vehicles into St. Augustine on detour. We felt the impact of the monster over the horizon, and that is what this battle has been.
Except for the sporadic fires that have destroyed nearly 12,000 acres of forest in the county in the last month, the terror has mostly been to the south. Flagler County. The last of Florida’s 67 counties, it was created in 1919, carved out of parts of St. Johns and Volusia Counties.
Flagler County is mostly pine trees. Lots of pine forests. There are two cities. Palm Coast: a new (20+ years in the making) development that is a mixture of up scale homes and very up scale manufactured housing. And there’s Bunnell, the county seat, the center of activity, such as it is. Tiny hundred year old crossroads. And there are pine forests. That’s what was burning.
Tonight the smoke returned. The air has been clear, and today the temperature hovered in the mid and upper 80’s. Very pleasant! But around 9:00pm tonight, the smoke rolled in like fog. The moon is just past first quarter, and drops a lot of light onto the rooftops. But the smoke diffuses the light so the air reflects it. Everything has a dull iridescent glow. It reminds me of silent walks on a snowy night in North Carolina and the light that seemed to come from everywhere. The moon is orange and hangs high over head. It’s obvious that I’m looking through smoke, but I don’t know where it s coming from.
On the worst day of the fires, the day the decision was made to begin evacuation of all of Flagler County, we went to the Ocala National Forest to swim and snorkel in the springs. Crystal clear, 100 feet deep pools with 72 degree water year round. Diving in is a shock to the system; then for hours after leaving, the body remains cool and clean. Driving the hour and a half home, we could see billows of dirty white smoke 25 and 30 miles away as Flagler County burned.
I had the sensation of being near the front of a war. This was not a hurricane that requires everyone to run away. Here, some people and equipment were racing to the front as the refugees ran away with what few possessions they could grab. The fire moves with the speed of a lumbering monster like an old Godzilla. We hear reports, we see the smoke, we recognize the names of places that are threatened, and we know people who live there. But here, we are not under any immediate threat.
Hotels lost reservations on Thursday when Daytona Speedway’s Pepsi 400 was cancelled. Hotels gained full occupancy on Friday when Flagler County had to evacuate. I-95 was empty except for brush trucks and Humvees, forestry trucks from nearby and other reinforcements from Idaho and Utah, units heading to the front.
There are a lot of people working really heard to stop this fire. People will be talking about it for a long, long time. It is not over yet; there are fires tonight. There is smoke settling ever thicker over my neighborhood. And I don’t know where from.
A week later.
The smoke has cleared and most of the fires are out. The only haze during the day is from heat. The full moon rose last Thursday, big and yellow while low; bright, and white when it reached its pinnacle. The way it is supposed to be.
We are all settling down to our normal mid summer routines. Still no rain. Pines and oaks are dropping leaves from their weakest limbs as the water table continues to drop. The Division of Forestry uses a drought index to measure conditions: 800 is the maximum and equates desert conditions. St. Johns, Flagler and Volusia Counties are holding at 736 today.
We know it will rain again. And when it does, we’ll all sit outside on our lawn furniture and hold our heads back and drink, drink, drink as will the earth beneath our feet.