Wildfires raging out of control toward Arizona towns
SHOW LOW, Ariz. (AP) – Two mammoth wildfires raged unchecked through paper-dry forest Sunday, threatening to join in a 50-mile-long line of flames and burn into this town of 7,700 people. The blazes already had destroyed about 185 homes elsewhere in the highlands of eastern Arizona, and as many as 25,000 people had fled more than half a dozen towns, including Show Low.
“It’s gut-wrenching watching this plume of smoke come up over us and knowing what’s behind it and knowing what it’s going to do to our community,” said Show Low Police Chief John Corder. “My house is probably going to be one of the first houses to go.”
Firefighters braced to defend neighborhoods on the west side of town. “This is going to be a tough day,” said fire spokesman Jim Paxon. “We’re going to get beat up pretty hard.”
In west Show Low, where an estimated 80 percent of residents live, a wall of smoke hovered over treetops near the exclusive community of Torreon, a gated subdivision on a golf course.
“Torreon’s going to be a wasteland when this is over,” said police officer Allan Meyer, himself a resident of west Show Low.
Most of the community was a virtual ghost town by afternoon. All the new cars had been moved off the lot of a Toyota dealership and stores stood empty. Cars, pickups and RV’s covered the parking lot of a K-Mart and Family Dollar, a safehouse of sorts for abandoned family vehicles.
The wildfires had burned more than 293,000 acres by Sunday. Afternoon temperatures were expected to reach the 90s, with single-digit humidity and shifting wind that was expected to further fan the flames.
As flames overran Heber-Overgaard, 35 miles west of Show Low, on Saturday, firefighters were able to save a large number of houses with help from air tankers that had dropped flame-retardant slurry directly on rooftops Paxon said. Seventy homes burned there, he said.
Firefighters likely couldn’t stop flames from entering Show Low, either, said Larry Humphrey, the incident commander. Their plan called for pulling back, letting the fire hit and then fighting where they could.
“We’ll spend our time on the ones we can possibly save,” Humphrey said. “It’s a tough call, but we have to make it.”
Show Low’s residents were ordered out late Saturday after flames leaped a firebreak that crews had bulldozed about eight miles west of town, and the 3,500 residents of neighboring Pinetop-Lakeside followed early Sunday.
The two wildfires had earlier overrun parts of the evacuated towns of Pinedale and Clay Springs, and late Saturday, flames jumped a bulldozed firebreak and entered Heber-Overgaard, an already-evacuated community of 2,700.
The area, popular with hikers and Phoenix-area residents who have built second homes to escape the desert heat, is covered with pinon, juniper and pine trees made explosively dry by years of drought.
Paxon said preliminary counts showed 115 homes had burned in towns just west of Show Low in a wildfire that exploded in size after starting Tuesday. It was thought to be human-caused, although authorities didn’t know whether it was an accident or arson. Seventy others were burned by a smaller fire started Thursday by a lost hiker trying to signal for help.
More than 3,000 evacuees had registered at a shelter in Eagar, where cots covered the artificial turf of a domed high school football stadium, said National Guard Maj. William Wilhoit.
Show Low resident Melissa Walker had parked her motor home outside the Eagar shelter.
“This is probably going to drive everybody out,” Walker said of her hometown. “Our livelihood depends on everyone else’s livelihood. The economy is going to crash.”
Across the West, 17 large fires were burning on 721,806 acres in seven states on Sunday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
In Colorado, crews fought a 67,700-acre blaze that had destroyed 45 homes in the southwestern corner of the state. A larger, 137,000-acre blaze south of Denver had destroyed at least 114 homes and was 60 percent contained. The National Interagency Fire Center said about 2,300 people remained under evacuation orders, down from 8,900 last week.
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On the Net:
Show Low: http://www.ci.show-low.az.us/
National Interagency Fire Center: http://www.nifc.gov/