PORT ST. LUCIE — The Nelsons moved to Connecticut and had two additional children. Neil Spector got married and still lives in the area and Howard Hillegas has watched homes sprout up along his once-vacant street.

Their lives — like those of others who experienced that chaotic day — moved on in the decade since wildfires ripped through parts of western Port St. Lucie on April 15, 1999. It was described then as the worst disaster in city history, and one of the worst fires on the Treasure Coast.

But the memories remain.

“I still think about that (fire) especially when you hear about the wildfires that occur once in a while throughout the state or anywhere else,” Spector, 44, said in a recent interview. “You feel for those people, you know what they went through. It was certainly a tough thing for me to go through.”

The wildfires consumed about 2,400 acres and dozens of homes, including those of Spector, a St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office detective; and Bill Nelson and his wife of more than two decades, Eileen.

Hillegas’s residence on Southwest Calder Street narrowly escaped significant damage, and a photo of him running by a wall of fire was featured on the front page of the Stuart News.

A state investigation released five months later determined a small brush fire that firefighters thought they had under control the day before sparked the wind-whipped blaze that erupted the next day in a wooded area near Gatlin and Rosser boulevards.

The lack of fire hydrants and water service in western Port St. Lucie created big challenges in battling the flames, which inflicted about $4.5 million in damage and cost local government about $2.8 million in fire fighting and cleanup.

The city has greatly expanded the number of hydrants throughout Port St. Lucie as part of a $500 million water and sewer upgrade since 1999, said Edward Cunningham, city communications director.

Hillegas, 75, recalled being in St. Lucie West when his wife, Barbara, who died last year, called and told him to return to his home on Southwest Calder Street — then the only residence there.

“Nothing was moving so I just parked my truck along the side of the road and come up here to the house,” Hillegas said. “She had the hose out, she was spraying the roof, but then they shut the power off. I’m on my own well, so when they shut the power off, I lost my water. … It burned through so fast, it was unbelievable.”

Police drove the streets evacuating residents, and Hillegas’s wife grabbed some important papers before they hopped in a car and drove around the corner. Hillegas ran during trips back to check if he still had a home.

“I only got about halfway up Calder Street,” said Hillegas, who originally is from Pennsylvania and retired from the coal mines. “At that time it was all woods so everything was burning on both sides.”

The Nelsons, who now live in Connecticut, were in a different situation.

Eileen went to Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart the day before for the birth of their daughter, Shaelyn. All that remained of their Jennifer Terrace house was a pink wooden stork placed outside to announce Shaelyn’s birth.

“We had nowhere to go, our house was done and gone,” Bill Nelson said. “There was nothing left. … You kind of go into almost like shock because you’re in disbelief.”

A photo of the 6-foot-tall stork made newspapers statewide, and the family appeared on NBC’s “Today Show” from their hospital room. Letters and community support poured in for the family, who moved to Florida in 1987 and eventually rebuilt.

“When I look back at it now, I just think it was just kind of a stepping stone,” said Bill Nelson, a technical writer for Pratt & Whitney. “Being a man of faith, I believe God was just placing that in our life at that time and we just needed to get through that time.”

The famed stork made an encore performance for the birth of Shaelyn’s sister, Brooke, in 2001. Their son, Brandon, was born in 2003.

“It’s still in the attic,” Eileen Nelson said of the stork. “We can’t seem to get rid of it.”

Like the Nelsons, Spector lost his house and spoke about community support. A woman donated a home to him until he could get back on his feet, and he still talks to her.

Spector, who was heading to Miami at the time on a kidnapping case, returned to his neighborhood to find it on fire. He fetched a favorite fishing rod, some pictures and a baseball bat signed by a New York Met from his home, which wasn’t on fire then, and went to help law enforcement officials with the blaze.

“Later that night I discovered my house had burned down,” Spector said.

He eventually rebuilt, but sold the residence in 2003 and lives elsewhere in the area.

“You never think it’s going to happen to you, but unfortunately it did,” he said.

Tips to protect homes from brush fires:

• Clean gutters, downspouts and roofs, where debris easily can be ignited by falling embers.

• Cut back vegetation, including tree branches, 30 feet from houses.

• Call 911 upon spotting fire or smoke.

• If possible, keep water hoses on hand to fight fires.

By Will Greenlee

Tags: baseball, car, children, communication, cuts, dies, escape, fight, fire, firefighter, firefighters, fish, Florida, government, hand, hospital, housing, imported, man, medical, Miami, photos, police, roads, sheriff, Stuart, trees, wife, woman, woods

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 11:19 am and is filed under Port St. Lucie, St. Lucie County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.