200 Flee as Hundreds Fight Florida Brush Fire

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. —  Hundreds of firefighters aided by bulldozers worked Friday to contain an 11,000-acre brush fire in southwest Florida that destroyed six homes and forced the evacuation of 200 persons. Across the state a second major fire raged on in the Everglades.

The more serious fire was burning in tinder-dry vegetation in the sprawling Golden Gate subdivision of Naples in southwest Florida. A fire line of plowed earth was widened to 100 feet by midday, giving forest rangers a better chance to contain the blaze, said Mike Long, chief of the Division of Forestry’s Fire Control Bureau.

Homes saved by firefighters stood as green islands amid gray, smoldering forests in the thinly populated area. Some homes were half-burned, while others were little more than blackened concrete blocks, melted lawn furniture and ashes.

Lt. Aaron Keen of the Collier County Sheriff’s Department said about 200 persons had been evacuated from the fire area.

Meanwhile, in Broward County west of Fort Lauderdale in southeast Florida, about 50,000 acres of uninhabited Everglades grasslands, dotted only by slightly elevated “islands” of hardwood trees, continued to burn.

That blaze, bordered by two major canals and two highways, was expected to burn itself out eventually.

Rangers were igniting dry sawgrass around the fire, hoping the controlled backfires would deprive the main blaze of fuel. Earlier predictions were that it might burn 100,000 acres, but observers said Friday that it may be held to 55,000 by controlled burning.

Underbrush all over the state was reduced to fire-prone kindling by a record three-day freeze last week, and a lack of rain in the southern portion has increased the danger.