Cape Fire a Close Call

Residents and visitors on Cape San Blas were up close and entirely too personal with a large fire that raced across a portion of the Cape Sunday.

According to Lanny Blair, fire chief of the South Gulf County Volunteer Fire Department, the fire was reported about 3 p.m. E.T. Sunday, Sept. 30, and raged for about 12 hours.

At noon Monday, members of the fire department and Florida Division of Forestry were still patrolling the burn area, putting out hot spots and watching for flare-ups.

The fire ranged from about a quarter mile west of Salinas Park westward for almost a mile on the south side of S.R. 30-E.

“It started out small, but the wind caught it and it became a big, big, hot fire,” Blair said.

On Sunday and Monday area winds were steady at about five to 15 miles per hour, with gusts up to about 20 miles per hour.

At press time the cause of the fire remains unknown. State fire investigators were scheduled to arrive later in the week, according to Blair.

The fire burned primarily within the area between the primary dune and first tier houses, but in many spots engulfed the land up to and between some first and second tier homes.

One house was gutted, Blair said, apparently when embers somehow entered the structure, causing the house to burn from the inside out.

Several other houses suffered damage to siding and stairs, but no apparent structural damage. Blair estimated about a dozen houses lost extensive lengths of boardwalk.

Dr. Patricia Hardman, owner of Gulf to Bay Construction and Development, was at her home in the middle of the fire zone as the blaze roared almost to her door.

“It was a horrible afternoon, to see a 10 to 12 foot blaze within 10 feet of your house,” she said. “I got the dogs and cars out and then we manned the hoses ourselves.

“The volunteers were spread thin fighting the fire in front of that wind. There are a lot of homes that were saved because of their efforts.”

Hardman’s house suffered damage to the siding and about half of the attached boardwalk.

Blair said he was very pleased with the way the department’s new big pumper truck performed, as well as their new six-wheel, golf-cart sized high pressure foam and water pump.

He added his thanks not only to his South Gulf volunteer firefighters, but also to “lots of locals guys who stopped by,” to Lighthouse Utilities, who contacted the firefighters, he said, and made sure they had sufficient water pressure during the fire, to all the other county volunteer fire departments who came to help, and to Gulf County Commissioner Jerry Barnes, who sent a work crew to the South Gulf Fire Department Monday to help with the equipment cleanup.