Fire and smoke cover an area of I-95 in Brevard County Wednesday    ALSO: A detailed map of affected areas in Florida

SCOTTSMOOR, Florida (CNN) -- A gas station, a Dairy Queen ice cream shop and several mobile homes went up in flames Wednesday after winds blew a wildfire across a coastal highway.

Mobile homes were burning in the Scottsmoor area, which is just inland from Cape Canaveral. Thick black and orange smoke filled the air as the Dairy Queen and a Citgo gas station along I-95 near the small town went up in flames before firefighters extinguished the blaze.

Brevard County authorities said sections of Interstate 95 and U.S. 1, both major north-south coastal highways, were closed between Scottsmoor and Mims, a distance of 12 miles. Traffic was routed west, around the area threatened by fire.

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Earlier, a 48-mile section of I-95 had been closed. CNN crews driving on the interstate described a thick blanket of gray smoke and haze that limited vision to less than 100 feet.

A wall of flames 40 feet high in the pine wood treetops was burning on both sides of State Road 5A, which runs east-west from I-95 to U.S. 1 near the Volusia County-Brevard County line.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 residents from Mims to Scottsmoor were evacuated from their homes for a third time as fires threatened the rural landscape.

Roger Harless, who was forced to leave his three-bedroom home near Mims twice on Tuesday, was told to leave again as wildfires neared a 250-home subdivision Wednesday.

He was ready to grab his three dogs and leave. "We haven't unloaded a thing," Harless said.

Earlier in the day, a trailer and a shed burned as winds blew flames within 50 yards of some houses. No homes were lost during the night.

Fires in Brevard County

State officials said Tuesday marked a dramatic increase in new fires and warned that 100-degree temperatures forecast for Florida over the next four days would make matters worse.

"Yesterday was the start of an upswing in fire activity in the state," said Greg Thayer of Florida Emergency Management.

He said 112 new fires were reported, well above the average of between 70 and 80 new fires a day for the previous week.

State officials said Brevard County was the state's hot spot, while fires continued to burn in Volusia County and near Jacksonville to the north. In Flagler County, six new fires, all started by lightning strikes, were reported.

A Brevard County resident sprays his home with water

Most of the fires were caused by lightning strikes, although in Volusia County, authorities arrested two youngsters, ages 8 and 9, and charged them with setting fire to a wooded area in their hometown of Deltona on Tuesday afternoon. The fire was quickly contained.

The two children were charged with a third-degree felony of willful, malicious and intentional burning of lands and released to the custody of their parents.

More than 1,500 fires since Memorial Day have burned 79 homes and about 260,000 acres -- mostly forest, palmetto scrub and swamp land -- from one tip of Florida to the other.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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