MIMS, Fla. ā 27 years ago, the city of Mims went through the nightmare of the 1998 wildfires.
Homes were lost, thousands of acres burned and people didnāt know what would happen next.
What You Need To Know
- The 1998 Florida wildfires burned nearly 500,000 acres and devastated Mims
- Ruth Amatoās family helped save homes by creating fire breaks with tractors
- The fires led to the creation of Floridaās prescribed fire program for mitigation
One womanās family played a key role in helping others during the fires.
The Mims landscape looked very different back in 1998.
Walking a scenic trail, Ruth Amato remembers it vividly.
āJust walking out here and remembering the fires were literally jumping from treetop to treetop,ā Amato recalled.
A video of the fires barely scratched the surface of what it was like to live through the infernos as nearly 500,000 acres burned over the course of several months.
Amatoās father and stepmother battled the blaze as firefighters on the front lines.
But the fires affected everyone.
She remembers family members riding on tractors to plow fire breaks to keep the flames from reaching homes off State Road 46.
āThey stayed through the entire thing, dropping some pumps in ponds, and running wells non-stop keeping the roofs wet. And when the fires would get too heavy, the firefighters would come in and help them knock it back, but thatās the only reason their homes still stand today. There just wasnāt enough to go around,ā she said.
Amato says she still had to go to work during that frightening time as ash reigned down from the sky.
āYou never know if you are going to get that call, and every day you literally hang on that, if your family is going to come out alive or not? Yeah, thatās traumatic,ā Amato said.
Her family originally settled in the Mims area all the way back in 1902. But never before had they experienced anything like those flames.
In the wake of the 1998 Florida wildfires, a special committee was appointed.
And part of the recommendations were prevention and mitigation of wildfiresā impact.
It gave rise to the stateās prescribed fire program, designed to educate people to use science as a tool to perform prescribed burns.
Amato said just talking about it now brings back the deep emotions of so long ago.
āFlorida on fire was exactly what it was. That was one of the best caption names that portrayed it,ā she said.