By Michael C. Bender
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
LAKE CITY — Jeff Boyd prepared early this year and bought his wife’s birthday present more than a week in advance.
He scheduled the day off and had planned to drive their two daughters to school, then treat her to lunch and maybe the beach.
Instead, the Palm Beach County firefighter spent the big day Wednesday on a pig farm in Columbia County fighting a big fire near the Georgia border.
“It’s a real bummer,” said Boyd, one of 21 firefighters from Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties battling the Bugaboo Fire, the biggest of more than 200 burning Wednesday in Florida.
Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue sent nine firefighters. The Martin, St. Lucie and West Palm Beach departments sent four each.
That group, known as Strike Team Four, started the day at the S&S Food Store on U.S. 441, about a mile within the barricade set up to stop motorists from driving too close to the fire.
The gas pumps there were turned off more than a week ago, but the parking lot was jumping at 7:30 a.m. Inside, Brenda Gilliam was ringing up Mountain Dews, bags of beef jerky and individually wrapped blueberry coffee cakes.
“They’re a long way from home,” Gilliam said of the firefighters she greets each day. “And it’s better if they see the same person every morning.”
Outside, more than 30 engines lined up along the northbound lane while firefighters ate grits from the Salvation Army truck and their chiefs, representing dozens of cities and counties across Florida, received the latest update about the fire and their assignments.
Strike Team Four headed to Register Road, where they’ve worked for several days clearing brush, shoveling pine needles and watering roofs to protect some of the 700 evacuated homes.
The homes sit under oak and cypress strewn with Spanish moss. They are fronted by aged picket fences, and their yards often feature empty yet drooping clotheslines or classic pickup trucks waiting for repairs.
“It’s pretty, man. Real pretty,” St. Lucie County firefighter Joey Clanton, 30, said of the area. “It’s going to get developed, I’m sure, like we are. But right now it’s real pretty. I wouldn’t mind owning a piece in this area.”
Wade D’Antonio, a Columbia County firefighter who moved last year from Palm Beach County with his wife and children, shared the sentiment.
“We were trying to escape the hurricanes,” D’Antonio, 38, said of his move. “Now we’ve got this. At least that’s what my wife keeps telling me.”
First wildfire for many
By afternoon, the slow winds and low humidity gave the fire crews an opportunity to close the circle and contain the blaze.
Bulldozers cleared trees and buried smoking piles of brush.
Dust from the ashy ground clouded the air, making it hard to see, while helicopters took turns dropping water and fire retardant on hot spots.
One firefighter ran a hose out to a stump engulfed in flames.
Surrounded by 119,000 blazing acres, the efforts seemed futile.
“It takes a certain kind of person to do this,” said Nick Balvalentin, a 41-year-old fire engine boss from California now in his 14th wildfire season.
But for many South Florida firefighters, the Bugaboo Fire was their first wildfire. For veterans of house fires, traffic accidents and other urban emergencies, this was a whole new experience -- rural terrain where the nearest fire hydrant can be 15 miles away.
“It’s not a subdivision like we normally come across in Palm Beach County,” said Tim Gardner, a Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue district chief.
“There are areas we’re driving 4 miles down a forest road and there’s a small neighborhood,” Gardner said. “And once you’re in there, if the fire comes through, there’s no way out. You’re going to stay in there until the fire goes past.”
Then there are the homes owned by folks who refuse to leave.
Gardner pulled up to one home that was supposed to be evacuated. The owner was irritated to see him.
“He said, ‘I’m not leaving,’ ” Gardner said. “He was agitated, but once he knew I wasn’t going to handcuff him and throw him in the back of the car, he was fine.”
The crew also ran across a pig farm in need of protection.
After removing lumber stacked up near the farmhouse and clearing pine needles from the roof, the firefighters turned their attention to the swine.
“We were feeding the pigs barbecue sauce, waiting for the fire,” Clanton joked.
Jokes ease the situation
If jokes and pranks put out fires, these firefighters would have been home days ago.
One group persuaded a colleague to celebrate his birthday by posing with them for a group picture. When he was properly positioned for the photo, they turned their water guns on him.
Boyd’s colleagues borrowed his digital camera to snap a photo of him sleeping in his own cab, which he had to do the first night they arrived.
Gardner suggested that Boyd, 38, of Lake Worth, let Strike Team Four sing his wife, Patty, Happy Birthday on a speaker phone when he next called home.
Most admit the good-natured ribbing keeps their minds off the facts that they’ve been battling a massive wildfire every day for more than a week, that they were away from their families on Mother’s Day and that they were supposed to return home twice, only to be called back.
“My wife told me not to tell her I was coming home again,” said Boyd, who has been in North Florida eight days. “She said just call when I cross the county line.”
But when Boyd heard Wednesday that a replacement crew was on its way from Palm Beach County and that he’d be home today, he called her anyway.
And she cursed at him.
“She knows what it’s like to be a firefighter’s wife,” he said.
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Florida Bugaboo Fire
Acres burned: 119,500 Wednesday, up from 109,000 Tuesday
Counties: Baker, Columbia
Evacuations: 730 homes between U.S. 441 and the Suwannee River; 1,200 more could be evacuated if the fire jumps U.S. 441
Residents displaced: 1,500
Structures destroyed: 1 building, no homes
Road closings: U.S. 441, periodically on Interstate 10, Interstate 75. See latest conditions at /
Other closings: Osceola National Forest north of I-10
Deployed resources: 419 Florida firefighters, 200-300 federal firefighters, 37 firetrucks, 23 bulldozers, 6 helicopters
Elsewhere in Florida
Wildfires: 202 Wednesday, down from 227 Tuesday
Acres: 57,000
Counties: 50, including Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie
Homes destroyed: 3 in Collier, 3 in Walton
Homes damaged: 18 in Walton, 1 in Bradford