For six hellish weeks in the summer of 1998, Volusia and Flagler counties burned.
Across the two counties, wildfire ravaged a combined 234,000 acres and consumed homes and businesses. Nearly every day brought more dramatic stories of firestorms raging out of control. Flagler County was the first in Florida’s history to face a countywide evacuation order. The iconic July 4 race in Daytona Beach was postponed.
There were no bystanders to this saga: Everyone lived with the resinous ash that clung to cars and windowsills, the often-choking stink of smoke hanging heavy in the air, the sight of little spark-ignited fires burning miles away from the major conflagrations. And the fear that the next spark would find their homes, their businesses.
Yet the community rallied. Local residents donned paper face masks and planned routes around roads closed due to smoke. They turned out to greet politicians (including President Bill Clinton), but reserved their warmest welcome for the thousands of firefighters who poured into this area.
Most of all, they learned. The first and harshest realization was that state and local officials had forgotten — or failed to understand — the lessons from the 1985 wildfires that ripped across this region even more destructively.
That prompted a long, hard look at what Florida should be doing differently. And in many ways, those lessons have stayed with Floridians. As documented by The News-Journal’s Dinah Voyles Pulver, state and local officials have been much more diligent over the past 20 years about conducting controlled burns — which clear out dried underbrush and make it less likely that lightning-sparked wildfires will reach the intensity to threaten homes. They’ve worked to formalize interagency coordination, drafting mutual-aid agreements and standardizing communications equipment so firefighters from different agencies can easily talk with each other. State and local governments have invested in more heavy equipment, including helicopters and bulldozers. Local officials learned to communicate through smartphones and social media about shifting threats — systems that truly came into their own during recent hurricanes.
And emergency managers have become far more adept at monitoring conditions, such as ground moisture, that contribute to fire risk.
Still, it’s hard not to worry. If the firestorms were to ignite again, would Florida — would Volusia County, would Flagler County — be ready? What lessons have failed to sink in, and what more could Florida be doing to ensure the state is ready to face an active fire season?
One of the biggest challenges is education. Better public-awareness campaigns could help encourage simple preventative measures, especially for those who arrived after 1998.
Florida should also re-evaluate the distribution of key firefighting infrastructure, particularly the status of its flotilla of heavy-duty firefighting equipment. Much of it is now a decade or more old.
Finally, state and local officials should be sure their firefighting plans reflect Florida’s ever-growing population, especially those areas where human development is pushing into once-wild areas. Homes and businesses on the edge of sprawling suburbs were the main battlefields in 1998.
Sooner or later, these preparations will be tested. As seen over the past years in California — and in statistical trends across the nation — wildfire is a pervasive and growing threat in the U.S., and many say Florida dodged a bullet in 2017, when conditions were right for catastrophic fires.
Volusia and Flagler counties pulled through in 1998, and if we have to, we’ll do it again. But those who remember the misery of that fiery summer should bolster the resolve to avoid a repeat.