MIAMI (Reuters) - Light rain in southern Florida helped bring a
massive brush fire in the Everglades under control Sunday, a day
after the blaze sent a pall of smoke over Miami, snarling traffic and
scaring residents.

State fire officials said the 50,000-acre inferno was expected to
consume 90,000 acres or more before burning itself out, but was
not threatening residential areas.

They were fighting to keep it under control Sunday, as a light rain
-- the first to hit the bone-dry area in weeks -- fell over much of
southern Florida. Highway 27, the route through the Everglades
known as "Alligator Alley," was closed while fire crews tended the
flames.

Thick smoke from the giant blaze, nicknamed the "Deceiving Fire"
had prompted hundreds of Miami-area residents to clog 911
emergency lines with worried calls.

There were no reports of new fires in the state, which has suffered
from drought-like conditions for weeks and been ravaged by
wildfires this season.

"It's quiet right now," Jim Karels, assistant chief of the state Forest
Protection Bureau, said. The Florida Department of Agriculture
said 108,971.5 acres had been charred by almost 2,478 fires in
Florida this year, a grim reminder of vicious blazes that consumed
500,000 acres last summer, causing some $400 million in
damages to homes and businesses.

This year's total is 25 to 30 percent above normal for a wildfire
season, state officials said.

Firefighters also battled fires in Florida's western panhandle
Saturday, losing one home in Destin, west of Panama City, but
saving others in Destin and in Gulf Breeze, a community near
Pensacola, state officials said.

"We've contained those fires overnight, so there's nothing burning
(there)," Karels said.

Forty-three homes were destroyed and another 33 damaged
Thursday in Port St. Lucie, a city of about 100,000 people on
Florida's east coast north of Palm Beach.

The rain welcomed in Miami Sunday was expected to end and
dry, hot conditions to return by Monday as a cold front sweeping
through the state passed out to sea.

The state fire season is not expected to end before mid-May, state
climatologists predicted.