For some near wildfire, a really close call

Frank Donnelly and his family evacuated their Manorville home on Wading River Road about 3 p.m. Monday.

When they returned about seven hours later, Donnelly, 59, could see charred trees and ground cover, just 400 yards from his home.

"I've never seen the likes of this before," said Donnelly, who has lived in the house for about 20 years.

Their place smelled like smoke, said his wife, Lisa Donnelly.

The family spent time with a relative in Rocky Point, but Lisa Donnelly said the experience of evacuating their home, which did not have electricity when she returned, left her physically and emotionally drained.

"I'm exhausted," she said. "I just want to know when the electricity is coming up."

A representative for National Grid said power remained out for a circuit and would remain so at the request of emergency workers.

Frank Donnelly said he was grateful to the volunteer firefighters from the dozens of nearby departments.

He said they did a tremendous job. "I'm so full of admiration for all of them."

Marcia Lucas of Manorville Road in Ridge had two pressing tasks as flames licked the back of her property Monday: Grab all the belongings she could carry and reunite with her children.

"I'm getting the hell out of here!" she shouted, scrambling into her car.

Lucas, a mother of two, said her kids -- she had no time to give their ages -- were with relatives and that she planned to pick them up at a nearby store as she finalized plans for where they would spend the night.

"It's extremely scary," she said. "I've been living here a long time, and I've never seen this."

As she and her neighbors loaded their cars, a caravan of fire engines from several dozen municipalities drove up and parked along the roadway as bright orange flames swallowed trees and moved perilously close to the homes.

At least 100 firefighters suited up amid thick smoke to attack the blaze. The flames gutted a home, charred wooden fences and felled trees, burning branches falling on rooftops as firefighters sprayed them with water.

"We're going in to try to knock down the head of the fire before it reaches the back of these homes," said First Lt. Ralph Lettieri of the Hagerman Fire Department in East Patchogue.

Mark Bennett, who lives on Oakwood Drive in Manorville, rushed home from work Monday evening to find the edge of his property burning. He went in his house, scooped up his 2-year-old corgi-beagle mix, Parker, along with a backpack full of kibble and quickly evacuated.

"We were lucky," Bennett said, noting that his house hadn't burned, though he lost some foliage. "We lost a little bit of property. It's scary."

High winds pushed the flames east, scorching hundreds of acres of dry earth, leaving a plume of thick gray smoke hanging over the area.

The 20 Red Cross volunteers at the Riverhead Senior Center in Aquebogue outnumbered evacuees who showed up Monday night. Among those who sought shelter were Court Fleming and his wife, Thelma Pacson, who couldn't get to their home on Wading River-Manor Road in Manorville from the Ronkonkoma train station.

They said their two daughters called them at 3 p.m. to tell them about the fire, and said they were able to get their two dogs out. The Suffolk SPCA sheltered pets in the parking lot of the senior center.

Jake Bunai, of Manorville, said fire raged through his yard Monday afternoon.

"We had the sprinklers on," he said. He added that he and his father were shuttling neighbors in and out of the danger zone with an all-terrain vehicle. His house was spared and an earlier evacuation had been called off.

With Mark Harrington