By Henry Pierson Curtis
The Orlando Sentinel

PALM BAY, Fla. — Soot and exhaustion smeared Bob Randolph's face.

The Palm Bay firefighter struggled to remember how he spent the previous 48 sleepless hours since brush fires began erupting Sunday.

"I've been up and down so many roads, I don't know where we started, period. I should know, because I was driving," he said shortly before noon Tuesday. "I guess I'm getting a little punch-drunk."

More than 200 firefighters have kept this city in south Brevard County from becoming a charred wasteland this week. Despite their best work, about 160 homes have been damaged, including dozens destroyed by Tuesday evening.

On street after street in Palm Bay and adjoining Malabar, lines of undamaged homes sat surrounded by blackened moonscapes where grass, shrubs and trees no longer grow.

The strategy that saved them: fire crews aboard small fire engines known as brush trucks that raced from hot spot to hot spot. Lots of luck helped as well, firefighters said.

"You do the best you can with the resources you've got," said Dale L. Armstrong, forester and firefighter with the state Division of Forestry. "You spend the first 72 hours behind the power curve catching up."

Dead vegetation

Typical of most Florida brush fires, the Palm Bay conflagration comes at the height of the dry season. Arson may have been the cause, but thousands of acres of wooded lots next to residences fueled the blazes.

Armstrong and others said that fires hadn't burned the undergrowth in the wooded, undeveloped lots in a residential area for more than a decade, so a foot-thick layer of dead vegetation had collected. Calamity came in sparks driven by high winds into the stands of saw palmettos and 30-foot pine trees.

"It burns real intense, as you can see," said Armstrong, pointing to the ruins of a house and an acre of nearby trees destroyed in less than 15 minutes late Sunday.

Unlike in fighting wildfires on open land, fire lines could not be cut through Palm Bay's neighborhoods to contain the flames. Utility lines and irrigation ditches prevented fire crews from operating plows and tractors after dark out of fear of injuries.

On Monday and Tuesday, fire crews spent the mornings soaking brush fires in advance of the afternoon winds that spread fires.

"If brush burns, then brush burns. It isn't someone's home," said Lt. Josh Madden of Brevard County Fire Rescue.

Madden and his crew worked until early Tuesday afternoon knocking down the remains of a fire on Old Mission Road that almost destroyed a 1917 home the previous night.

Water remains a major concern.

"We tried to use it sparingly," said Brevard County firefighter Jerry Smith as he transferred 1,000 gallons from his tanker to a brush truck. "It can last 20 to 30 minutes."

'We were on our own'

An unknown number of homes burned Sunday and Monday because the number of fires outnumbered fire equipment.

"Thank God there are firetrucks now," said Sandra Blandino, who lives on Gandy Road. "Last night we were on our own from 2:30 p.m. to 6 a.m."

Their ranch house escaped destruction thanks to a gas generator and a stranger.

When fires on three sides of the house destroyed power lines, Blandino's husband, Joseph, used a portable generator he bought for hurricane season to power a pump to spray the approaching flames.

That's when a family in a pickup stopped and used a chain saw to drop burning trees so they fell away from the house. The man and his family left without introducing themselves -- just a card for TNG Tree Service.

"If it was not for that family, we wouldn't have a home right now," said Sandra Blandino.

Crews fighting the fire came from Clay County, Brevard County, Jacksonville and NASA. They were part of more than 20 Florida fire departments and one off-duty Los Angeles County firefighter providing help.

"My family all lives here," said L.A. firefighter James Sanders, who had been volunteering for 48 hours straight.

Driving along wooded Atz Road, Sanders warned residents to evacuate as a nearby brush fire grew into a roaring forest fire. The pace continued to be exhausting.

"If you have a small brush fire in the summer when it rains, this doesn't happen," said Lt. Jim Townend, a 23-year veteran with the Palm Bay Fire Department. "A lot of time people look at us and think we have the easiest job possible, but at times like this you really earn your money."

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