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SHOW LOW (USA), June 25: Firefighters struggling to save a small Arizona town from one of the most ferocious wildfires ever to scorch the U.S. West reported slow but steady progress on Tuesday as President George W. Bush flew in to declare the region a major disaster area.
Bush, who was due to visit the burn zone about 240kms northeast of Phoenix later on Tuesday, acted to make federal aid available after the fire forced some 30,000 people to evacuate and destroyed more than 300 homes.
In Show Low, the mountain town on the edge of the monster 520-square-mile (1,295-sq-km) wildfire, firefighters said they were beginning to see success after days of desperate efforts to cut fire breaks and slow the progress of the flames.
Bulldozers pushed through dense, dry underbrush, clearing fuel out of the path of the fire, while air tankers flew overhead dumping fire retardant on the blazing pine trees of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.
While flames were crackling just half a mile (0.8 km) from Show Low’s town center, fire management spokesman Jim Paxon said firefighters were encouraged because no buildings were lost Monday — the first time in five days no houses burned.
“We are making excellent progress,” Paxon said. “It’s a little less aggressive (with) more mundane burning conditions.”
But Paxon cautioned that the wildfire, which has already charred more than 330,000 acres (134,000 hectares), was still huge and unpredictable and could easily surge back to put Show Low in jeopardy once more.
“This is just such a huge fire with so many issues,” he said. “We are still not showing any containment.”
MORE HELP ON THE SCENE: Bush’s disaster declaration comes after an announcement by Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Albaugh that the agency would make $20 million immediately available to the state to help defray costs of the firefighting operation.
Bush, who stops in Arizona on his way to a summit in Canada, will get a first-hand look at the towering walls of smoke and flames, one of a number of early U.S. wildfires that have signaled an exceptionally dangerous summer fire season.
With much of the U.S. West gripped by drought, 20 large fires were burning in nine states (on) Tuesday with more than 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of land burned to date — more than double the annual 10-year average, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
A fire in southwest Colorado, near Durango, grew to 66,310 acres (26,855 hectares) Tuesday and has destroyed 45 homes. At times flame ups forced crews on the east plank of the fire to withdraw, fire information officer Larry Helmerick said.
The Hayman fire, which has scorched some 137,000 acres (54,800 hectares) 50 miles (80 km) southwest of Denver, is now 70 percent contained, although officials are still not predicting when the 18-day-old blaze, that has destroyed 133 houses, will be fully contained.
But the Arizona fire remains firefighters’ top priority.
That fire became the largest wildfire in the nation when two blazes merged Sunday and now covers an area bigger than the city of Los Angeles.
Believed to have been started by humans a week ago, it fire has burned 329 houses and 16 businesses in the eastern Arizona high country and forced 30,000 people from their homes.
In deserted Show Low, where 8,000 people were told to clear out Saturday, firefighters were guarding against drifting embers from the nearby inferno sparking new fires in town.
“We’re going to get fires in Show Low,” Paxon said. “But it is not going to be a running crown fire.”
Paxon said firefighters hoped to get their first degree of containment on the wildfire sometime on Tuesday, and added fire lines appeared to be holding the blaze back — at the moment — from a full frontal assault on Show Low.
Some 2,200 people are attacking the blaze with about a dozen helicopters and 15 air tankers dropping flame retardant.—Reuters
