NORTH PORT, Fla. — Over the weekend, North Port Fire Rescue battled a 75-acre brush fire. The blaze forced northbound lanes of I-75 to shut down as crews evacuated residents.
The fire crept dangerously close to some homes, with the heat melting through fences, and even melting blinds inside one home. Fortunately, the fire is now contained, no injuries were reported, and no homes were severely damaged.
Eric Yurch said his family didn't have much time to evacuate. They left in a hurry, just before the approaching flames made some roads impassable.
"My 10-year-old daughter looked out the window and just saw a wall of flames," Yurch described.
Yurch didn't think he'd have a home to come back to, certain his property was a goner.
"No, no, absolutely not," he said. "I stayed down there for a few minutes to let the people down the street know. And I was certain that I was seeing our house burning from down there. So the fact that we had a house was just unbelievable."
Yurch gives all the credit to the firefighters who battled this brush fire.
"My hat's off to all the crews out here doing firefighting. They train daily for this," Deputy Fire Chief Scott Lane said. "And they put their lives on the line, they come out here and do the work they perform because this is what their what their job is."
The layout of the neighborhood made for a perfect environment for a fire. Many of the lots have not been developed and are filled with thick and dry brush.
Fire crews are still in the area checking out any hotspots.
"So residents here [need to] adhere to the burn ban that we have, because any spark from a charcoal grill or discarded cigarette, or if they're doing illegal burns in our backyard can cause a fire like this to happen because of the dryness in the area," Lane warned. "And we had, at the time, the weather conditions where we had wind, we had dry conditions. And that just was a recipe for a fire to be like this."
There are burn bans in Charlotte, Desoto, Hardee, Manatee and Sarasota counties.
If possible, the chief recommends homeowners have at least 30 feet of "defensible space" around their home, where there is nothing flammable that could fuel a fire.
Malique Rankin is a general assignment reporter with 10 Tampa Bay. You can email her story ideas at mrankin@10tampabay.com and follow her Facebook, X, and Instagram pages.