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‘That time of the year:’ Brush fires spread in Palm Bay amid dry, windy conditions

Fire in woods destroys homeless camps

PALM BAY, Fla. – Assistant Fire Chief John Ringleb walked through the woods off Babcock Street south of Malabar Road and pointed out how quickly brush fires on Sunday grew.

“Dry conditions, heavy winds, really sort of pushed this fire and made it larger than it initially came in as,” Ringleb told News 6′s James Sparvero.

A brush fire that hopped Babcock in 2018 burned just a few miles south of the weekend fires.

“It’s that time of the year,” Ringleb said. “Anything’s able to sort of catch fire on a whim.”

A man who lived in a homeless camp in the burned woods said the fire started small but grew large very quickly.

“It was like maybe 10 by 10, and within five minutes had spread almost like a half a football field,” said the man who asked not to be named.

Another man who was in the woods shared video of a fire he recorded in the same location on Friday.

That meant Sunday’s fire wasn’t the first in the woods.

Ringleb didn’t have anything to say on what caused the fires.

The man who lived in the woods described himself as a tree hugger and said he felt bad for the animals.

“And there’s like four of us out here and just, some people lost everything,” he said.

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