INDIANTOWN — Firefighters already contained a 1 acre flare-up today, even after 4 inches of rain fell overnight.

Officials say years of hurricane debris is keeping a fire near the Booker Park Community, and firefighters are focusing on extinguishing all smoldering vegetation as brush fires burn for a fourth day. Several firebreaks are inaccessible for crews in the Indian Wood Community, causing problems containing the Indian Trail Fire, according to a Division of Forestry release this morning.

As the rain helps, it also brings lightning that can spark new fires.

For firefighters, the “witching hour” comes not at midnight, but at midday, with the threat of dark magic buried deep in the ground.

The temperature rises, the humidity drops and a seemingly subdued fire can burst with surprising strength, sparked from burning muck.

Residents of Indianwood, a mobile home community in Indiantown for ages 55 and up, got a taste of that phenomenon firsthand this week, as embers suddenly blew across a nearly dry canal bed and shot flames up vines and through palmettos. Two houses were lost, another was saved only by a rapid change in wind, and people were injured as they fled the rapidly moving fire.

“People were running for their lives, really,” said Mel Smith, a retired firefighter who has lived in Indianwood for 17 years. “At one time you couldn’t see 10 feet with the smoke and the flames.”

Wildfires burned through nearly 3,000 acres in three days in western Martin County, fire and forestry officials said. Much of the fire was in and around Indiantown, with other blazes in Palm City near the Martin County landfill. By mid-morning Tuesday, there were at least 10 fires, authorities said.

The fires, which came just weeks after another blaze threatened homes in Stuart, were the worst in the Treasure Coast in a decade, firefighters said. In 1999, wildfires destroyed 42 homes in Port St. Lucie and damaged about a dozen others.

The homes lost this week were the first destroyed by wildfires in Martin County in about 25 years, said Jon Belding, a spokesman for Martin County Fire-Rescue.
One Martin County sheriff’s deputy, Rebecca Brady, 39, was injured in a car crash en route to the fires. She was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

Three planes and three helicopters arrived, dropping hundreds of gallons of water on the fires Tuesday. Firefighters from several agencies, including Palm Beach, St. Lucie and Indian River counties, helped Martin County Fire-Rescue battle the blazes.

Storms hit Tuesday afternoon, dumping rain on Indiantown’s fires but passing over two others with only a few drops, said Melissa Yunas, a spokeswoman for the state Division of Forestry.

The rain, although good, must penetrate the ground to have much of an effect, Yunas said. These fires, even when contained, will probably burn for a week.

Brush fire season reaches its peak in May, and firefighters battled more than 100 fires statewide on Tuesday. Parts of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast are close to their driest seasons on record.

“I’m hoping that we will get significant rainfall in the very near future,” Division of Forestry spokesman Gerry LaCavera said. “The problem is that before it comes, we get significant lightning.”

Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said Tuesday that “the quick response of our firefighters has kept the number of acres lower than would be expected during such dry conditions.”

He urged residents not to throw lighted cigarettes out of car windows, to avoid unnecessary outdoor burning and to increase their caution with power tools.

Several new fires sparked in Martin County at about 1 p.m. Tuesday, the exact time firefighters refer to as the “witching hour,” and weary firefighters were scrambling again.

In Indianwood, where the fires damaged homes, residents were wary Tuesday, eyeing acres of charred ground behind their homes, the smoke drifting along like fog over the occasional flame. Fire already had crept up on them once, seeming to spark and spread out of nowhere.

Roxie Smith, who at one point battled the fire with a hose alongside her husband, Mel, recalled how quickly everything changed.

“It was real calm and then the wind shifted and blew the embers up,” she said.
Eileen Berry, 80, described the event simply: “Terrible, terrible.”

Surveying the damage Tuesday, she said she became “near hysteric” when she realized that her husband, Charles, who has limited mobility, never could move as quickly as that fire.

“It about scared me half to death,” she said.

Staff writers Jason Schultz and Kathleen Chapman contributed to this story.

Tags: fire, Indiantown, Indianwood, Martin County, Palm City

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