National Association of Counties * Washington, DC / Vol. 30, No. 14 * July 20, 1998

---

The July 4th holiday weekend was no picnic in Flagler County, Fla.

Satellite photos on July 3 showed that the four large wildfires burning to the north, west and south were converging. Officials were seriously considering the possibility that the whole county could be in flames sometime Saturday.

Flagler's commissioners met early July 3 with state officials and representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They decided to issue a mandatory evacuation order for the county's more than 42,000 residents.

"Most of the population was evacuated Friday morning within four hours," said George Hanns, Flagler County commissioner. "The county had plans in place. For about a week before, we advised people to keep personal items handy in case there was an evacuation."

"For about a week, you'd wake up in the morning and smell the fires," Hanns said. "People were aware about a possible evacuation."

The county mobilized about 100 volunteers, part of a program called Citizens On Patrol (COPS). Using old police cars, the volunteers drove around the county, helping state police and the sheriff's department warn residents about the evacuation order.

"The evacuation went very well," said Rich Wieser, public information officer for Flagler County Emergency Services. "The biggest snag was that during the evacuation, state Route 100, one of only two routes out, had a major fire break out. We had to turn people around back into the county and send them down I-95."

Flagler County is on the state's east coast just north of Daytona. The county usually welcomes tens of thousands of tourists for the holiday weekend. This year it was virtually empty except for utility workers, police officers enforcing a curfew, firefighters and about 4,000 residents who refused to leave.

"If you left, you couldn't get back in," said Shelly Edmonson, an accounts payable clerk at the county courthouse. "It's my home. I didn't feel threatened." Just the same, with the fire about a mile from her home, she spent the weekend at a friend's house near the beach.

The fires melted phone lines and charred more than 400 utility poles to the point they had to be replaced. More than 40 homes in the county were destroyed.

Helicopters used lakes in the county for water to dump on the fires, some of which were as much as eight miles across and a mile deep at times, Hanns said.

Late Friday night the winds that had been feeding the fires shifted and a light rain began to fall, prompting Gov. Lawton Chiles to tell CNN later in the weekend that the county had "dodged a real bullet."

The evacuation order was lifted early July 6, after two more days with high humidity and light rain. Although the fires were still burning when residents began returning, firefighters estimated they were largely under control.

"The return was very smooth," Wieser said. "We had three helicopters in the air over the routes. Each time I checked with them, the report was the same. 'Flowing smoothly.' The sheriff's department did a phenomenal job."

Most people returning to Flagler County found their homes undamaged but the ground around them "devastated," Wieser said.

"In the most heavily populated area, 26,800 acres burned, but firefighters saved about 97 percent of the homes," Wieser said. "You see all this devastation and you see all the houses standing with minimal damage, or no damage at all. Some houses have burned vegetation within a foot of the house, but the house is undamaged."

Hanns said the county has set up one-stop recovery stations at local schools. Residents can meet with insurance agents, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the Small Business Administration there.

The fire efforts were going well July 7, Wieser said. The forestry department was taking advantage of more light rain to carve more fire breaks.

Long range weather forecasts are hazy about the end of the severe drought that has made the state a tinderbox for the past month and a half.

"I don't know about the long-range forecast," Wieser said. "We're playing it day by day here."