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50-mile wall of flame closes in
Compiled from Times wires SHOW LOW, Ariz. -- Two mammoth wildfires raged unchecked through paper-dry forest Sunday, merging into a 50-mile-long line of flames that loomed over this town of nearly 8,000 people. The Rodeo and Chedeski blazes already have burned more than 300,000 acres and destroyed about 185 homes elsewhere in the highlands of eastern Arizona. Together they formed the biggest wildfire by far in the state's history. Fire officials said it could easily scorch 1-million acres, about 1,500 square miles, before it goes out. As many as 25,000 people have fled more than half a dozen towns. Now the fire was threatening to hit its first real population center, Show Low, a town named for a style of poker. The town was eerily ghostlike on Sunday. Most of its residents fled on Saturday night, leaving only squadrons of firefighters, fire officials and several hundred townspeople who defied the mandatory evacuation order. "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. All the experts are saying the same thing: It is likely to get worse, perhaps much worse, before it gets better. That is especially bad news for Show Low, the economic engine of the area as a tourist and recreation destination for residents of Phoenix and Tucson. Fishing and hunting, gambling at the Apache casino, and the Fort Apache Timber Co. keep the town vibrant. Now, the forest that brings thousands to the area each summer is burned and closed to outsiders, the casino and timber mill are shut, and state officials are predicting that the fires will affect the economic viability of the area for years to come. "I cannot tell you how serious this is," said Gov. Jane Dee Hull, who toured Show Low and a nearby evacuation site in Eagar on Sunday. "This is like a freight train coming at us." 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." Many of the displaced stayed with family and friends, or even strangers who opened their doors, and most hotels in towns within an hour's drive of the area were booked. Still others sought refuge at three shelters on the outskirts of the destruction, anxiously awaiting word. One by one, they flooded into high schools turned into temporary homes, clutching keepsakes they feared could be all they have left. They cried and sought comfort in one another -- friends, neighbors, strangers brought together by disaster and held together by hope. "People are nervous and teary, not knowing what to expect -- not even knowing where to go," said Marilyn Scher, who left her home in Pinetop on Thursday morning. 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. -- Information from the Associated Press and New York Times was used in this report.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
