FLORIDA BESET BY FLAMES; FIRE THREATENS CITIES AS CREWS CAN'T KEEP UP.

Byline: Lori Rozsa, Gary Long and Martin Merzer Knight Ridder Newspapers

Propelled by hostile winds, swarms of wildfires devoured scores of homes and still swept unchecked through urban areas of northeast Florida late Thursday. All 40,000 residents prepared to flee Titusville - a county seat now in the line of fire.

Retreating firefighters begged for equipment, reinforcements and, most of all, rain. But the brown sky delivered only foot-long fragments of ash and the eerie vision of a blood-red sun, its light filtered by the smoke.

Temperatures swelled toward 100 degrees. The winds picked up again. The fires could not be stopped.

Acrid smoke reached as far south as Broward and Dade counties, triggering false alarms of local fires. Satellite photos showed plumes of smoke extending hundreds of miles over the Atlantic Ocean. A huge new fire near Orlando menaced a town with a serene name: Christmas.

``It's like sitting on a pile of dynamite,'' said Charles S. Spagnola, evacuated from his home in Ormond Beach.

The calculus of disaster:

At least 80 homes and buildings have been destroyed since Tuesday, when winds fanned the flames that had been marching across Florida for weeks. Fifty firefighters suffered burns and other injuries. Five thousand Florida Power & Light customers baked in oppressive heat without electricity to run air conditioning.

And more than 35,000 residents huddled in civil defense shelters or at the Volusia County fairgrounds, or they roamed aimlessly, evacuees seeking only to avoid new bursts of fire.

``It just breaks your heart,'' said Jean Sharpe, a relief worker in Titusville. ``It's the saddest thing I've ever seen. These folks don't know if they have homes anymore. You can just look in their eyes and see how sad and worried they are.''

Some residents took matters into their own hands, racing with shovels from home to home to smother small brush fires. Others left sprinklers running on their roofs and hoped for the best.

``This is really making people nervous,'' said Tracy Hall, a spokeswoman for the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. ``They're hot. They're tired. They're worried.''

The big July 4 race at the Daytona International Speedway was postponed until October, disappointing a sellout crowd of at least 185,000. Many already had convened in Daytona Beach, a city now engulfed by smoke and approached by fire.

These visitors needed to depart in a hurry. But how?

Interstate 95 remained closed from St. Augustine to Titusville. Police also blockaded long stretches of U.S. 1.

John Alsup of Smithville, Tenn., decided that he and his 11-year-old son, Jacob, were better off taking their chances with the fire than the gridlock.

``I think we're going to stay down here for a couple days,'' Alsup said ``I'm not going to fight this traffic. I feel safer here.''

The closure of I-95 yielded an odd panorama: all four lanes of Florida's aortic artery - empty as far as the eye could see. A Florida Highway Patrol car occasionally raced past, blue lights flashing, disappearing quickly, making the road seem even more forsaken than before.

Near Titusville, wind-whipped wildfires jumped State Road 46 in three places, threatening two trailer parks and 300 homes in the Fawn Lake subdivision as it moved southeast toward I-95.

Police Capt. Steve Bridges said authorities were primed to order the entire city evacuated. More than 40,000 people live in Titusville, the seat of Brevard County and home to many workers at the nearby Kennedy Space Center.

In south Florida, drifting smoke from the distant fires provoked dozens of calls to local fire departments Thursday evening. The callers feared nearby blazes; dispatchers told them not to worry.

``This is not uncommon, but we're trying to tell residents to only call 911 if they see flames,'' said Broward County Fire Rescue spokesman Gene Herrera. ``People smell smoke and right away call in, but all it's doing is bogging down our emergency lines.''

Back in north Florida, Gov. Lawton Chiles begged the Federal Emergency Management Agency for more equipment. Other calls went out for personnel.

Firefighters and equipment from points as distant as California and Montana already augment Florida's strained resources, but the slogan of the day was ``We need more.''

``We have almost every heavy bulldozer in the South,'' Chiles said. ``Now we are reaching outside of that area.''

Said Joe Duran, a U.S. Forestry Service employee from California, now on duty in Tallahassee: ``Florida has depleted most of the resources here on the East Coast.''

In Washington, Vice President Al Gore expressed concern and the Pentagon announced that 601 National Guard troops are now mustered on duty in Florida to aid thousands of police officers and firefighters.

WHERE TO CALL

Visitors heading to Florida should call ahead to check road and weather conditions if they plan to visit an area hit by fires and smoke. Visitors also might want to stop at Florida Welcome stations to check on possible road closures or detours. Here are numbers to call:

Florida tourism information: [phone].

Volusia County tourism information: [phone].

Florida Department of Transportation: [phone].

Florida's Space Coast Office of Tourism: [phone].

Florida Division of Emergency Management: [phone].

SOURCE: Cox News Service

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Box

PHOTO (1--Color) Firefighter Amy Midgett retreats from a wall of flames engulfing foliage along U.S. Highway 92, west of Daytona Beach, Fla.

Nigel Cook/Daytona Beach News-Journal

(2) Myra and Robert Jones embrace as fire closes in on their home Thursday near Ormond Beach, Fla.

Mark Foley/Associated Press

BOX: WHERE TO CALL (See text)