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Thousands are forced from their homes in the West due to the blazes, and more evacuations are possible.
©Associated Press
June 21, 2002
SHOW LOW, Ariz. -- A huge fire in the tinder-dry forests of eastern Arizona raced through a hastily abandoned town Thursday, chasing firefighters off the line and prompting an evacuation warning for thousands of nearby residents.
"This is a monster," said Jim Paxon, a U.S. Forest Service fire information officer.
The fire roared through the upscale vacation community of Pinedale, but the extent of the damage wasn't immediately known. Television footage showed at least one house aflame.
Navajo County Manager Eddie Koury said his staff had seen at least five homes ablaze.
Virtually all 390 residents had fled a day earlier and fire crews had to pull back because the fire was too dangerous. Officials estimated the flames were reaching 2,000 degrees.
"We're at the mercy of Mother Nature right now. There's not a whole lot we can do with it," said Larry Humphrey, the incident fire commander.
The so-called Rodeo fire has charred 60,000 acres since it began Tuesday about 110 miles northeast of Phoenix and it was nowhere close to being contained. It has forced more than 4,000 people to flee their homes in Pinedale, Linden and Clay Springs.
Late Thursday, residents were urged to evacuate Heber-Overgaard, a nearby community of about 2,700 because of a fire sparked by a lost hiker trying to signal a news helicopter. That blaze quickly grew to 2,000 acres.
And residents of Show Low, a city of 7,700 just east of Pinedale, and 3,500 more people in neighboring Pinetop-Lakeside were told to be ready to evacuate on an hour's notice.
Marilyn Price, the fire chief in Linden, said her department had to pull crews out of Pinedale because the Rodeo fire was "so fast and so hot."
At an evacuation center 60 miles away, Pinedale residents wept as they were told the bad news. Also sobbing was Lana Rexroat, a mother of four who is expecting another child in six weeks, after learning the blaze was within 3 miles of her home in Clay Springs.
"I want to have a home to take my baby to in six weeks," she said.
The Rodeo fire was one of 19 major blazes burning across the nation Thursday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Wildfires have scorched 1.84-million acres so far this year -- far ahead of the 10-year average of 888,000 acres. In Florida in 1998, when dry conditions touched off nearly 5,000 fires, more than 500,000 acres were burned.
In Colorado, crews took advantage of rain and cooler weather to attack a 136,000-acre blaze that has burned at least 25 homes and forced 8,900 evacuations since June 8. In federal court in Denver on Thursday, Forest Service employee Terry Barton pleaded innocent to charges accusing her of setting the fire.
In southwestern Colorado, two large fires continued to rage out of control after forcing hundreds of people out of their homes.
Crews near Durango, Colo., tried to protect a trio of communications towers from a 54,000-acre fire that jumped containment lines Wednesday and again Thursday to threaten 400 more homes; it has already destroyed 33.
A blaze 70 miles away grew to 6,000 acres Thursday and had destroyed eight homes near the community of South Fork.
In Arizona, authorities said they didn't know how the Rodeo fire started but suggested it had been caused by man. More than 200 firefighters were frantically trying to contain the fire's eastern and western flanks, but crews were kept away from the northern edge because of the danger.
Troy Hvidsten, a spokesman for the Linden Fire Department, said firefighters wouldn't be able to save a 500-home neighborhood because the houses are made of wood and there was too much surrounding fuel.
Evacuees were directed to school gymnasiums in Springerville and Eagar, both an hour's drive east of the fire.
"It makes me a little nervous to know it's coming and there's nothing we can do about it," said Show Low resident Ben Butler, who stayed up all night with his wife preparing to flee.
Paxon said firefighting resources were strained because of fires burning elsewhere in the Southwest. "There's a shortage of everything," Paxon said.
In southwestern Colorado, hot, windy weather bedeviled firefighters trying to contain a 53,888-acre blaze northeast of Durango. By late afternoon, wind-driven flames shot through containment lines on the west and moved closer to houses.
"This is a very dangerous situation," Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., said after touring the area by helicopter.
Rain and higher humidity slowed a 136,000-acre fire southwest of Denver, the state's largest. Crews welcomed the break from the heat but worried about high winds and possible flash floods from a thunderstorm.