Fires Drive Out Residents in 3 Florida Areas Bradford County is Hit Hard South of Starke, Closing a School and Some Roads.

By STEVE PATTERSON

Fires in Bradford County raced across 5,000 acres of parched woodland in a matter of hours Monday, forcing hundreds of families out of their homes.

By late Monday, damage reached from near Starke into Alachua County.

“It’s so dry,” said Brian Johns, Bradford’s emergency management director.

Every firefighter available in Bradford County was combating the woods fires, helped by crews from Jacksonville and neighboring Union County.

Two major roads – Florida 100 and County Road 18 between 100 and U.S. 301 – were closed Monday night. Hampton Elementary School was scheduled to be closed today, but other schools would open as normal.

By late Monday, 230 homes had been evacuated in the Griffis Loop and Hampton areas. Johns said he didn’t know whether any homes had been damaged.

Winds were pushing both blazes southwest, creating a possibility the two fires could merge into a single front. Johns said that could actually help firefighters, because it would mean one fire would march into an area where fuel had been depleted.

A shelter was set up in the gymnasium of Bradford Middle School in Starke.

Further evacuations were ordered Monday in windy, parched Florida as a wildfire crept within a quarter-mile of some homes.

Flames forced people from their homes in two other parts of the state earlier Monday.

An evacuation sprung up quickly in Lake County as a fire roared out of control near the Wekiva River, the Associated Press reported.

The AP said that earlier Monday, about 20 homes near Freeport in Walton County in the Panhandle were evacuated as a 300-acre fire threatened the neighborhood.

Officials say conditions across the state are critical, with humidity at dangerously low levels inland and winds gusting over 20 mph.

“It’s getting interesting, and I don’t think it’s going to get better soon,” state Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate told the AP.

Causing the most concern was a 6,100-acre fire about four miles west of Ormond Beach on the east coast. Fire threatened the Rima Ridge subdivision.

(c) 2007 Florida Times Union. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.