Hasty evacuations as smoke, flames roll in

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 the area.

"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 gray smoke hanging thick over the area.

The 20 Red Cross volunteers at the Riverhead Senior Center in Aquebogue outnumbered evacuees who showed up. 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.

"I'm hoping we can get home tomorrow," Fleming said.

Margaret Hannan, heading the Red Cross Disaster Relief, said the shelter could accommodate up to 50 people overnight. One man asked whether he could bring pets with him. He was told no.

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

"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.

Larry Keller, who lives in a county-owned home at Robert Cushman Murphy Park in Manorville, started smelling smoke outside around 4 p.m. He evacuated less than two hours later and could see flames to the south.

"We had bags set up," he said before heading to Hampton Bays to stay with friends. "We were pretty well prepared."

His girlfriend, Sharyn Marks, said the flames appeared to move eastward, but south of the park, away from the house.

On the other side of the driveway is an early 19th century Greek Revival home that has stood vacant for decades. The county has made it part of a new program seeking private individuals to restore historic sites in exchange for low-cost opportunities to live there.