JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Imagine watching a brush fire rage uncontrolled just across the street from your home.
Now imagine the horror of being downwind from that fire.
That was the case for hundreds of neighbors in Jacksonville’s Cedar Glen neighborhood Sunday, as a human-caused fire burned almost 15 acres at the western edge of Pumpkin Hill Preserve, directly across Grover Road from their houses.
“You [could] see the fire going fast,” said Awni Hakooz, who watched the fire clearly from his back yard.
More accurately, he couldn’t stop watching.
“A lot because it was windy," he said. "I was scared from the wind.”
Although firefighters were able to bring the flames under control by nightfall, some of the woods were still burning and smoldering Monday evening, more than 24 hours after the fire had been reported. The smoke had also lingered through the night.
“It was horrible,” Hakooz explained. “In the morning when I woke up … I couldn’t see nothing because the smoke was horrible.”
Neighbors’ worries were quite justified, according to D.E.P. fire management officer Jeff DiMaggio, who was managing the crew working on hotspots Monday.
“If they had a lot of vegetation around their house,” DiMaggio said, “there was a good chance, you know, with embers, can go quite a distance with the wind.”
In fact, officials were reasonably certain that it was windblown debris that started the woods burning.
“It originated on some private property,” said Annaleasa Winter of the Florida Forest Service. “We found some illegal debris burning that went on some private property, and you could see, follow a pattern of it, burned right on to the Pumpkin Hill Preserve”.
DiMaggio pointed to many partially charred trees, explaining that the least-burned side of a trunk usually faces the direction of a fire’s origin – one telltale clue for investigators.
“We know where, the property that it originated, so we’ll just talk to the homeowners,” Winter said, adding that it’s illegal to burn yard waste in Duval County and that anyone, anywhere, who fails to keep a fire contained to their property can be held liable.
“You’re charged possibly for suppression cost and any other related damage that you do as well.”
Winter added that spring, with its dry and often windy conditions, is a time most conducive to wilderness fires in northeast Florida.
“If you’re not watching it, if you don’t have a hose out there, it doesn’t take much at all for it to get away,” she said.
D.E.P. firefighters said they will remain working the scene until no smoke is seen, probably about mid-week.
For information about laws regulating deliberate burning on private property, click here.