ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — At one point in the smoky gloom of late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, June 25 and 26, Orange Beach Fire Chief Forney Howard was mighty concerned.

It wouldn’t be the last time the veteran firefighter would begin to worry before the Gulf State Park wildfire would be tamed. It was just the first of many.

“I was afraid at any moment they were going to send out word about Lauder,” Howard said during an interview in his office Thursday afternoon. “I was afraid it was going straight to Lauder.”

Lauder Lane runs south off Canal Road and has several residential streets that branch off it to the east and west. Howard’s worst fears, however, were not realized.

 It would be a recurring theme during the early, anxious days of the wildfire that posed a real and dangerous threat to Orange Beach.

“We knew that was going to go,” Howard said of the Lauder neighborhoods. “We were going to bring our firetrucks in there and try to protect it.”

Howard smiled, incredulous. “It never jumped,” he said.

During an hourlong conservation, Howard uttered that phrase several times: “I thought it was going to go.” But all houses and neighborhoods were remarkably spared.

How close did Orange Beach come to a real disaster?

“I don’t know if you can draw up a worst-case scenario,” Howard said. “I don’t know if I have ever seen a back burn that big. I have never seen that much fire in the sky in my life. That’s a lot of fire. And it worked perfectly. That’s what’s so good about it.”

The Saturday-night, Sunday-morning back burn that placed the Lauder Lane neighborhood in the eye of the firestorm caused many anxious moments.

“We got to forestry and it was decided that evening that we would back burn,” Howard said. “If we had not done that, I don’t know what would have happened. And it worked. You can ride those trails and see. It jumped in a couple of places, but it worked.”

Howard stayed at the Command Post overnight and caught some sleep on Sunday. He returned just in time for the wind to pick up to push the fire to threaten the city’s new $20 million sewer plant.

“The city lives on that sewer plant,” he said. “You don’t think about that. If you don’t have that, the city isn’t going to work real well.

“We thought we had it at the sewer plant road, but it jumped it and got in to there. That’s when we asked for the helicopter. The helicopter didn’t show up until late the next morning. We were really wanting to protect this.”

That same surge of fire also jumped into a stand of trees behind the city’s shop.

“Number one, we could let it go this way (west),” he said. “And the other thing was our city shop. Those trees were right in the middle of our city shop. We’d be out of service if that burned down. We were jumping back and forth, back and forth. And it caught our debris pile on fire. That was a scary point.”

The thick stand of woods directly behind the shop caught after embers jumped an east-west fire lane near the entrance to the Orange Beach Sportsplex. That jump, in turn, spawned embers that sparked two fires north of Canal Road.

“When I was in there (the helicopter) dumped on this one for us, and that was so thick you couldn’t hardly get in there,” Howard said. “It was hard to believe that little scope of trees was as thick as it was. It was putting off embers and brands all over that place, and it jumped over here,” Howard said pointing to a spot on the map between Cypress Village and The Wharf.

Thus came moment number two moment of “what if?”

“I was driving back and I went over there,” he said of the Cypress Village blaze. “Engine 3 was first, and they were in the woods trying to hit it. It was moving so fast; they couldn’t stay up with it. We called the helicopter, and he dropped three times. Just right on it and killed it. If we hadn’t have had that …

“Then it jumped over here behind Dr. Brown’s office. That was the second scary time.”

Last, but certainly not least, was the chemical-fueled burn on Wednesday, July 1 in woods directly south of Gulf Oak Ridge Trail.

“That afternoon, when it was coming up that ridge, if we had not had that Chinook and those helicopters, we would be telling a different story,” Howard said.

Directly in the path of the possible outbreak, should it occur, would be the Beaver Creek and Azalea Court subdivisions. As was a 12-acre property and home owned by the Wade family just south of Canal Road on Power Line Road. “I thought it would go,” Howard said of the Wade property.

“We were ready,” Howard said. “The private property owners all through here were so great. They said do whatever you have to do. They let us go through their gates and cut fire lanes. We put a fire engine in Azalea, put a fire engine in Beaver. We were prepared for the worst, but thankfully it didn’t happen.”

But an even bigger danger loomed if the fire did get in that part of the woods surrounding the two subdivisions.

“Really, if this caught fire, this would just be minor,” he said pointing to the woods west of Power Line Road that includes Beaver Creek and Azalea Court subdivisions.

“It would be going to Jack Edwards Airport. I don’t know where it would stop. County Road 8? And really, if it can jump this road here (Canal Road), it can jump this water (Intracoastal Waterway) with the right wind.”

Howard said the breaks cut to battle the wildfire around the subdivisions would be maintained to help with any future outbreaks.

“Our plan for the future is to keep those lines dressed, keep ‘em clean,” he said. “We need more accessible trails in case this ever happens again. We’ve got to have more north-south trails that can corner it, stop it.”

From the start of the fire, Howard knew it would require a lot of work to keep the fire from getting to residential areas of Orange Beach. He arrived on the scene a little after 2 p.m. Saturday.

“Somebody called me shortly after 1 and told me they had a woods fire in Gulf Shores, and they had requested help,” he said. “That’s how I got notified, and I turned on the radio, and I heard Gulf Shores was doing what they could, so I headed down here.

“We went down the corner of Power Line and Gulf Ridge Trail, and that’s where we set up command to start with. We could see it coming. We had one forestry guy on the scene and one forestry guy who was on vacation who showed up. The fire was making so much progress, and the first thing, it was going to threaten Orange Beach if it crossed that road. The next thing was the powerlines before it got to Orange Beach.”

Howard and crews began planning in earnest to battle the blaze they knew was coming.

“Forest fires, you’ve got to think ahead,” he said. “You don’t put a forest fire out right there. You can’t put it out with water unless you’ve got a helicopter with an 800-gallon bucket.

“My first thought was that it was going to continue east, so we called EMC and those people and notified everybody in Orange Beach. We even sent people (into the Back Country Trail) checking our fire lanes this way. Called everybody in.”

The fire had crews and commanders on the run almost from the start.

“Our attempts to hold it in that corner did not work and it crossed the power lines a little later that evening,” he said.

“Just as soon as it crossed, the wind shifted and it came straight out of the south. It started coming straight up powerline road.

“It was at that point, we made a hasty retreat and I called EMC and shut the power down,” Howard said. “We moved on out to the sewer plant and part of us moved over to the (Sportsplex). It jumped the road there and went in the woods next to the sewer plant. Even a little bit of it jumped the fence there at the sewer plant. That was about the time we came on over to the (Sportsplex) and set up command.”

Howard grins broadly when he thinks back on a huge fire that had only a few minor injuries, and the only piece of structure to burn was one bit of a boardwalk trail bridge close to the Sportsplex.

“I’m just glad nobody got hurt, and nobody lost any of their prized possessions or homes,” he said. “We were worried about Mr. Wade’s property for a while

“I was sure it was going to go.”

There’s that phrase again.