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FIRE CALLS |
LIKE ALL DEPARTMENTS IN FLORIDA,
Reedy Creek has its share of brush fires. Most are caused by lightening
strikes and many of those are put out by the accompanying rain. Sometimes,
that doesn’t happen, however. The largest of these occurred in May 2001
in an area that was on Disney property but several miles from the parks
or anything else.
A
LIGHTENING STRIKE ON MAY
18 ignited an area of Disney property that is basically inaccessible.
The fire eventually grew to some 1500 acres. If the wind blew toward the
parks, it put sometimes heavy smoke into all 4 theme parks, and the column
of smoke could be seen from every where on property. There were several
other fires burning in Central Florida at the time. The smoke from these
combined fires caused the highway patrol to close I-4 several times and
was blames for a number of motor vehicle accidents, including one fatality.
At
the time these larger fires were burning, another smaller fire broke out
not far from the Epcot parking lot. The area that was burned actually straddled
the back road that runs between the road going to cast member parking at
Epcot and guest parking. It's the road that connects to what is sometimes
used as overflow parking for cast members at Epcot. The burnt area straddled
this road. It looked like about a dozen or so acres of underbrush and small
trees got burned. This was all in a backstage area and no guest areas were
affected, except that the smoke was visible from inside Epcot and from
some of the nearby highways and it made CNN because of the other fires
burning in the area.
A helicopter working with the Florida. Division of Forestry that had been working the larger fire that was a couple miles west of the theme parks assisted with putting out this fire.
Rumor has it that someone had thrown out a cigarette from a passing car and started the blaze. That happens so very often in Florida with the current drought conditions. It amazes me that people can live here or spend any amount of time here and not recognize the dangers from tossing out lit tobacco products onto the roadside. I actually watched a small fire get started in the median of a four-lane highway in Southwest Florida because the driver of the car in front of me tossed a lit cigarette from his window while we were both waiting for the light to change.
On another similar occasion near Kissimmee, I actually got out of my truck and stomped out a small smouldering fire that was caused by a driver tossing out a cigar. I didn't see this driver or car, but the cigar was still there and small patch of grass had been scorched by the time I saw the smoke coming up and stopped to check it out.
ON FRIDAY,
JANUARY
18, 2001, THERE WAS A MACHINERY FIRE at the landfill behind the
Magic Kingdom. It never got out of control, but landfill fires have great
potential for doing so and burning for days.
In October 1998 both the Reedy Creek and Orange County fire departments
were committed to a fire at the landfill. The Magnolia Golf Course adjacent
to the Shades of Green hotel was closed down because of heavy smoke, but
none of the parks or resorts were affected by the fire or smoke. It burnt
for a couple of days and involved several semi trailers containing construction
materials that were partially buried at the landfill. Its origin was believed
to be spontaneous combustion as a result of being partially buried under
mulch and compost. News reports stated EPA confirmed this was standard
disposal for construction materials.
ON APRIL 4, 2000, A FIRE FORCED THE EVACUATION OF PLANET HOLLYWOOD at Downtown Disney. It was a small fire as such things go but hard to get to because it was inside the wall of the icon that towers over the restaurant. The department was there almost all night but the fire was under control within minutes of firefighters’ arrival.
ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2002, THERE WAS A FIRE AT EPCOT but not really IN Epcot. It happened around 3 o'clock that morning at the electrical substation that provides power for Epcot and a couple of the surrounding resorts. It's not unusual for Central Energy Plant techs to do preventative maintenance around that hour, and localized power failures are not at all unusual. The night shift in the communications center deals with such outages all the time because of the affect they have on the fire alarm monitoring system. This time, some equipment inside the power plant caught fire. From what I hear there was a lot of smoke but very little in the way of actual fire, which was extinguished in very short order. There was damage to the electrical generating plant, however, and that meant Epcot was without power for most of the day. Epcot was closed all day Wednesday.
The site of the fire is behind Epcot across from the Epcot wardrobe building and at the entrance to Epcot Cast Member parking. The fire never involved Epcot itself.
The local media made a big deal about how this was only the 3rd time Epcot had ever closed since it opened in 1982. The other two times were September 1999 for Hurricane Floyd and then September 11, 2001.
I don’t really get the comparison. The other two times the entire Walt Disney World Resort shut down except for the hotels. That has happened only those two times since Walt Disney World opened on October 1, 1971. This time, only Epcot was closed for the day since it had no electricity. Three other theme parks, two water parks, six golf courses, two mini-golf courses, the Village Marketplace, Downtown Disney Westside, and Pleasure Island were all open and fully operational.
THEN THERE ARE THE LITTLE THINGS. In February 2001 there was a small a fire on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. A bird’s nest caught fire, and the ride shut down and was evacuated. Sometimes small grass fires get started under a monorail beam when the collector shoes on the trains throw sparks into the grass.
This is how the Orlando Sentinel showed the location of the fire. |
The electrical substation and Epcot Energy Plant where the fire actually took place. Spaceship Earth is visible to the right, and the gold dome is the NASA sponsored Mission Space attraction that was still under construction |