Three years after the Five Mile Swamp Fire, the pain - and lawsuits - still linger
Robert "Dan" Davis was in Alabama having his surgically replaced knee looked at on May 6, 2020, the day an out of control prescribed burn, the now infamous Five Mile Swamp Fire, jumped Interstate 10, raced through his neighborhood and consumed his home.
It also took the prize winning '65 Mustang he'd worked on for 14 years, other antique cars and tractors, a pole barn and tools accumulated over a 40-year career as a machinist. It even took the family dog.
With his phone pinging repeatedly with emergency evacuation notices, Davis rushed back to Milton, only to find the road to his Ladda Court home blocked. He recalled a deputy telling him, "Ain't no point in getting down there. It's gone."
Today, three-and-a half years later, Davis still tears up as he describes the losses his family sustained, and at times in conversation he looks mad enough to punch someone.
"You know how much I've heard from them people?" he asked rhetorically. "Zero."
Three years later, a settlement
Last week Davis made some headway against those he refers to as "them people" when a lawsuit alleging negligence he filed in June of 2020 against Westervelt Ecological Services and Munroe Forest and Wildlife Management Inc. was settled out of court.
He said he couldn't discuss the terms of the settlement.
"I can tell you I'm nowhere near satisfied with it," he said.
Westervelt is a forest management company headquartered in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that owns just under 1,200 acres of timberland in South Central Santa Rosa County. Munroe Forest was conducting the prescribed burn on the largest of Westervelt's three parcels, a 589-acre tract, when the fire got out of control and became the Five Mile Swamp Fire.
Davis' was one of 14 homes and 27 buildings destroyed in the fire, which devastated 2,200 acres and forced the emergency evacuations of 1,100 residents of the Garcon Point Road area. No people were killed in the fire.
His lawsuit was the first of 11 that have been filed against Westervelt and Munroe Forest and Wildlife Management in the wake of the Five Mile Swamp Fire. Two others were filed, like his, in the months immediately after the fire.
Four more, all by insurance companies seeking reimbursement for the payment of client claims, were filed in 2021. Another suit was filed in 2022 and three more just last year.
In February of 2021, attorneys for Davis amended the original complaint to include Childs Land Clearing LLC as a defendant in the case. Childs Land Clearing was a company whose equipment was deployed during the prescribed burn and utilized to battle the fire when it got out of control.
Records indicate Childs Land Clearing has ceased business operations and is not named as a defendant in two of the three most recent lawsuits filed.
The lawsuits claim that Westervelt, Munroe and Childs Land Clearing were negligent in conducting a controlled burn on a windy day at a time when there had been less rainfall than normal in "abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions."
It also claims the companies deployed insufficient firefighting equipment not suited for the conditions on the property being burned and that the equipment got stuck in the mucky terrain and was rendered inoperable.
More: Five Mile Swamp Fire: No criminal charges will be filed; drought conditions present on day of fire
"The failure prevented the ability to control the fire," Davis' lawsuit said.
The Five Mile Swamp Fire has sparked extensive litigation
Davis and his wife, Cathy, are listed in the lawsuit as co-plaintiffs with neighbors Raymond and Carrie Neff and Scott and Angeline Dodson. Brian Hancock, an attorney with the Pensacola firm of Taylor, Warren Weidner and Hancock, said the Neff's lawsuit has been settled, and the Dodson case is scheduled for trial in mid April.
Three of the four lawsuits filed by insurers seeking reimbursement were settled last year. A fourth case remains in litigation.
In July of last year, Hancock filed another lawsuit against Westervelt and Munroe on behalf of residents of the Garcon Point Road area. This one originally named 40 individual victims of the alleged negligence. He estimated about half of those are still pending.
Hancock declined to release the terms of any of the settlements thus far reached.
The most recent personal liability lawsuit looks much like the one filed by Davis and his neighbors. It accuses Westervelt and Munroe of not only negligence, but also of violating State Statute 590, which governs the safe conduct of open burning.
It alleges the actions of Westervelt and Munroe "were so reckless or wanting in care that they constitute a conscious disregard or indifference to the life, safety or rights of persons exposed."
"The fire would not, in the ordinary course of events, have escaped the predetermined area without simple or gross negligence on the part of (each company) and its employees, agents, contractors or subcontractors," it states.
Two other lawsuits, neither of which appear to have been settled, were filed by landowners who maintained close to 100 acres each of "valuable timber."
Both suits allege the fire's destruction of their trees eliminated the sound barrier that muffled noise coming from nearby I-10. This, in turn, made the land "less desirable for residential use and rendered the property less valuable."
The most recent lawsuit against Westervelt and Munroe resulting from the Five Mile Swamp Fire was filed Sept. 1 of last year by BellSouth Communications doing business as AT&T. It alleges the companies' negligence damaged structures and property owned by AT&T and seeks damages of just over $18,000.
The human toll of losing everything
A military veteran, Davis said he lost all of his identifying paperwork in the fire that destroyed his home. His efforts to replace the documents he needed to make insurance claims were complicated by issues related to COVID.
He said at no time during his entire three-year ordeal had he received consideration of any type from the agents of the companies responsible for the destruction of his home.
More: 'I can't even imagine what they were thinking:' Santa Rosa wants answers to wildfire
"They kept telling me I was made whole," he said. "I asked 'How do you figure I was made whole?' and they said, 'You had insurance.' I was like, 'I wouldn't have had to fight all this if you hadn't burnt my damn house down.' I had to use my insurance. I should have been using their insurance."
The antique vehicles that he lost were covered by collectible car insurance, but that did little to salve the hurt of losing the '65 Mustang he'd just shown for the first time and been awarded Best of Show honors.
"That doesn't cover the 14 years I worked on it," he said. "The insurance adjuster cried when he saw the before and after pictures of that car. That fire got so hot the drive shaft exploded."
The Davises had lived in the Ladda Court home that burned to the ground since 1985. Along with important records, the couple lost photographs, keepsakes and the family dog.
A black cat and white pickup truck somehow survived the blaze. The cat was safely located several days after the fire.
"You had the whole family crying over a cat," Davis said.
In the aftermath of the fire, Davis and his wife lived with their daughter until November of 2021 when they could finally get back into a rebuilt home. He said his wife refused to go to their Ladda Court property until the slab had been laid to begin new construction.
Evidence of the fire remain all around Ladda Court and Garcon Point Road, like the badly charred fence posts that still ring Davis' yard. He said he lost 52 trees initially and continues to see them fall when heavy winds kick up.
In some ways his family is lucky, though. Just down the road, where the Neff family once resided, all that remains is a cement slab and the mailbox where the residence at 2684 Ladda Court once stood. The Neffs were unable to rebuild on their former home site and have moved away.
Davis said he understands what happened in May of 2020 wasn't something that was done on purpose, but it still angers him that those responsible have fought so hard in court to minimize their own culpability and have never reached out to the community the Five Mile Swamp Fire so devastated.
"Those (expletive) have never said they're sorry for what happened," he said.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Santa Rosa Five Mile Swamp Fire sparked 11 lawsuits against Westervelt
