June 2003 Fire, part 3

The fire completely burned the grass and underbrush, which isn't such a bad thing by itself. The problem is that where the dead debris had accumulated around the base of trees, it took them out as well. These desert oak trees grow slowly and the ones in this area have been estimated to be be 70 years old or more. The grass will be back in a few months, the cactus in a couple of years, but the lost trees won't get replaced for decades.

Here's a good example of a tree that burned at the base. You can tell from all the ash that some
sort of underbrush, either a bush or dead branches from the tree itself, kept the fire going long enough to catch the trunk on fire. We now make it a point to trim all the low-hanging dead branches from the trees on our lot, and we don't let brush accumulate anywhere.

This was a pretty typical scene in the area after the fire.

I spent most of the day after the fire hiking the hillside putting out fires like this where I could. The Forest Service mostly ignored these hot spots if they were well within the area already burned, but I lugged a five gallon bucket of water around to put out those that were close to our lot. Later that evening we counted about a hundred fires still glowing on the mountain, but all except a few were gone by the following evening.

June 2003 Fire, part 2

The officials let residents back into the burn area just before noon the next day. Many areas were still smoldering, and a persistent spot high up in a canyon on the northwest side of the mountain would keep firefighters busy for another three days. The amazing thing is that no homes were lost. The firefighters simply dug their heels in and refused to let the fire cross firelines around the homes. I was particularly amazed to see a certain wood-frame house high on the hillside still intact ... I had watched flames roar around it for hours the day before.

Here you can see the extent of the burned area. Most of the mountainside was affected.

Here you can see where the firefighters managed to hold the fire back at Stone Ridge Road. How they did it is beyond me. Check the picture on the previous page that was taken as we drove out on that same road.

This picture looks down on the lot where we are building our home. The fire stopped at the road, our "driveway", and various other bare spots on the lot. About a half acre of our lot was blackened, but we didn't lose any trees.

One of the bare spots that helped stop the fire was the foot path that my wife and the dogs use to walk up to the lot. I say "helped", because I was told that several firefighters also were there all Saturday night protecting our partially completed house.

Here is how close the fire got to the walls of our house.

And here is how close it got to the building we are staying in while we build our house.

We feel extremely lucky to have escaped damage from the fire. I can't say enough about the work the firefighters put in, many of whom were putting in 16 hour shifts. We've been told that 225 men and women helped put it out, together with a small army of trucks, helicopters, airplanes, and assorted support vehicles. Firefighters included National Forest personnel and about a dozen different volunteer fire departments from all over southern Arizona. The Sheriff's Department was all over the place, and the local animal control units were out there providing temporary quarters for pets whose owners had to evacuate their homes. It was a pretty impressive showing.

June 2003 Fire, part 1

On June 21, 2003, I looked up from working to see a fire just beginning on the hillside above us to the west. It appeared to originate near a chapel parking lot that is often used as a pickup point for illegal immigrants and we first believed it was from an abandoned campfire. The fire department announced later that someone there had been using a welder and sparks had ignited the grass. I can't imagine anyone being dumb enough to use a welder out in the open on such a windy day.

I took this picture about five minutes after I first saw the blaze and it had already doubled in size. The chapel is hidden by the large cloud of smoke.



The grass was extremely dry and the winds rapidly pushed the fire southward up the ridge, toward the left of the picture.



The fire swept across the face of the mountain along a diagonal line, first racing up the ridges and then moving down the slopes toward us.



Soon the entire peak was engulfed. Firefighters had first tried to contain the fire with slurry planes, but high winds made it unsafe for them to continue.



More fire trucks with as many as 250 firefighters soon arrived, and helicopters began dropping water along defensive lines.



As it became obvious that the fire couldn't be contained, the priority switched to protecting homes. Here the fire has moved much closer to us.



We got the final word to evacuate about 3:00 in the afternoon. I took this picture as we drove out, and the fire was closer to the road than it looks. The heat was pretty intense.



I took this picture from the fire station less than a mile away. We tried to find a vantage point to see if our homes were burning, then finally drove into town to spend the night with friends.