DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - Vice President Al Gore toured fire-ravaged Florida Monday, after his plane flew through heavy smoke to land at Daytona Beach airport.
"This is an epic battle," Gore told fire crews who have labored near Daytona Beach where the flames have been most persistent.
Gore's plane descended through a cloud of smoke to reach the airport in Daytona Beach. The area's skies have been choked for days with heavy smoke from fires that firefighters have dubbed "the dragon."
"When we entered the air space, before we even started our approach for landing, we could tell it was serious," Gore said.
Wildfires boosted by record heat and scant rainfall have consumed more than 230,000 acres in Florida this month, injuring 30 people, mostly firefighters, and destroying 83 homes and 54 other structures in what has been called Florida's worst fire season in six decades. No deaths have been reported.
Some of the worst fires have raged near developments ringing Daytona Beach, a city on the state's east coast, but crews have worked around the clock to save every house in the area.
"You have protected every last home in this whole area and every last life in this whole area. That is a remarkable accomplishment," Gore said.
Only a few dozen firefighters met with the vice president, who visited a temporary command center where officials have coordinated the efforts of federal, state and local firefighters. Gore also toured a fire station and visited homeowners in a nearby county whose houses had been burned.
More than 2,100 firefighters, many from outside the state, were battling Florida blazes Monday.
The National Weather Service said a persistent high- pressure system over the Gulf of Mexico reduced the number of tropical thunderstorms typical in Florida this time of year.
Daytona Beach has had only about 10 percent of its normal June rainfall, while soaring temperatures have made June one of the hottest single months ever recorded in the state.
"About the only thing that would be a real drought breaker would be a tropical depression that would bring about half a foot of rain," said Bart Hagemeyer, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in Melbourne, Florida.
Gore said that "there's only a one in one-thousandth chance that this is normal without the effects of global warming factored in."
There have been 200 emergency room admissions in the area from the effects of heat and smoke in June, medical officials told the vice president.
Some owners whose homes were leveled by the fires did not echo Gore's praise of the fire crews. In neighboring Flagler County, residents complained that firefighters tried to save a hunting camp, leaving subdivision residents to try to fight the fires with garden hoses.
Resident Bob March showed Gore the charred remains of his children's toys, saying: "The house doesn't mean anything. But what's in the house makes it a home."
State officials said the worst of the fires were under control by Monday, helped partly by rain over the weekend. But they reported there were 54 fires in the 24 hours that ended at midnight Sunday.
Since June 1, 1,416 wildfires have been recorded in Florida, scorching more than 232,640 acres. The state has estimated that $190 million in property has been lost.
"We think with the equipment we have and some rain that we've gotten, we may be turning the corner. But obviously we still have an emergency and we're still fighting fires virtually all over the state," said Terence McElroy, a spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture.
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