Starting a Fire

Transcript for 2012 Show 12 AZ Wildlife Views

On screen: www.azgfd.gov

Jim Harken: Arizona Wildlife Views—brought to you by the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and the Heritage Fund, lottery dollars working for wildlife. Some projects made possible by the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Fund.

Child Speaker: I got one!

Jim Paxon, Arizona Game & Fish : Hello, I’m Jim Paxon, and welcome to this special edition of Arizona Wildlife Views. Tonight, we’re going to explore the nature of fire.

Jim Zornes, Supervisor, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest: It’s still really vivid in my mind. Rick Davalos, district ranger, called me, and he said, hey, we have a little fire in the Wallow Wilderness. And he said it’s probably going to be a problem.

Rick Davalos, Alpine Ranger District: Of the Alpine Ranger District, we have approximately 450,000 acres. About 80% of it was burned.

Jim Paxon: When Crown fire moved through here, it was moving faster than a man can run. The sound was almost excruciating. If you can consider putting your ear close to the track when the train goes by or when you’re behind the jet and they throttle up to take off, it’s a sound that once you’ve experienced you’ll never ever forget.

Male Speaker 1: And it’s 5 o’clock and pretty dark.

Jim Zornes: Greer was another area. It’s amazing we didn’t lose the whole town of Greer.

Male Speaker 2: The firefighters were able to save the cabin.

Jim Paxon: This was a historic fire year in Arizona. We’ve seen more than 30 big fires and more than 1.1 million acres burned. This fire—the Wallow fire—on Escudilla was 538,000 acres. That’s a mega fire.

Dianne Howard: Of all the wildfires that tore across Arizona in 2011, none was larger than the Wallow fire in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. On May 29, it blew up out of an unattended campfire in the Bear Wallow wilderness. And it took firefighters six weeks to contain it.

In that time, it charred more than 840 square miles of eastern Arizona, destroying 32 homes; 4 businesses; and more than 30 barns, sheds, and other buildings. It was the largest wildfire in Arizona history.

Jim Zornes: When it first started, it was no different than any of our other fire starts. We had quite a few fires this summer, and local resources would respond.

The first night—the first day of the fire, though, we knew we had something different. So, I actually went to the ranger station that night and talked to the district ranger. And we’d ordered what we call a team—Type 2 team. These teams are developed and trained specifically for the larger-type fire incidents. And at the time, we thought a Type 2 was sufficient. We thought—we knew it was going to be a large fire, but we didn’t know how large. So, the Type 2 team, actually we called them on a—let’s see, that was a Sunday when the fire started. The team was there Monday morning. Do the in-brief and then actually took over the fire I believe about 6 o’clock Monday night. And then from there, the Type 2 team had it for a number of days, not very many. Extreme growth, extreme potential. And then we called in a Type 1 team to manage portions of the fire. So, we had a Type 1 and a Type 2 team in. And then after it made the run to alpine, we came in with what we call an area command, and area command set up. And at one time, I believe we had four Type 1 teams working the fire.

Dianne Howard: Unseasonably strong winds, blowing 50 to 60 miles per hour, coupled with low humidity and plenty of dry fuel drove the fire to grow at a massive rate.

Jim Zornes: The reason the fire got so big was the weather. There’s no doubt. I’ve heard all kinds of stories and rumors about, well, you didn’t do this, you didn’t do that. We had people on it immediately. And it just, wrong time, or right time, however you want to look at it.

Rick Davalos: We know that it’s going to be big. We know that the prevailing wind’s out of the southwest. We know the direction it’s going to be going. We start looking at anchor points or locations where we might slow the fire down, or possibly hold it.

Speaker 2: It grew. The first night it had spotted. There were a couple of different fires burning on either side of the road, one in the wilderness, down in the wilderness, and the other up what we call Fish Creek drainage.

And it was probably—I believe one of them was 600 and the other was about 800 by midnight that night. So ,it had grown fast and then, of course, exponentially from that.

We had certain periods of time during the fire it would grow 60,000, 70,000, and 80,000 acres a day. So, really unprecedented type of growth that we were seeing.

Dianne Howard: The winds would blow hot embers from the main fire, causing spot fires up to a mile away. Those fires would then burn together, creating a mega fire that was almost impossible to control. One tactic the firefighters used is called burning out. The goal is to remove the fuels between the main fire and a defensible area, usually a road where they hope to slow its progress.

Jim Zornes: Most of the time we like to use roads. Because you have a wide, vegetation-free surface. And so if you have a roadway that’s say, 25 feet wide, that’s your barrier.

But once again, these fires because of the intensity, because of the climate, and because of the topography, they do a lot of spotting. So, if it spots 30 feet with a 25-foot line, you’ve got trouble.

So, what we do is we start working back from this anchored position that’s a road, a trail, or a fire line, and start increasing that distance. And so that’s what the burning out does. It allows you to remove the fuel between your primary control point and the fire itself.

So, the more you burn back, the greater expanse than you can contain spot fires. And if you have enough time, you can actually burn miles back away from a contact point. Unfortunately, with 40, 50, and 60 mile an hour winds, we weren’t able to do that all the time.

The farthest I’ve heard this fire spot was three miles, but that’s a long ways.

Dianne Howard: While the firefighters battled the main blaze, the towns of Eagar, Springerville, Alpine, and Nutrioso were being evacuated.

Female Speaker: Oh, my goodness!

Dianne Howard: Residents took what they could carry and hoped they would find their homes still standing when they returned.

But towns weren’t the only thing being threatened by the Wallow fire. The Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area is a 1,300-acre historic ranching property that was purchased by Arizona Game and Fish in 1993. It’s considered the crown jewel of the department’s wildlife areas. And it lay directly in the path of the blaze.

Brian Crawford, Arizona Game & Fish: Well, the first day on May 31, I think I looked off to the south and saw a little puff of smoke and thought nothing of it. You know it’s happened before many times. And each day it grew and grew and grew. And by about the third day, I said, well, this has the same conditions as the Rodeo-Chediski. And the fire is in control. And it will most likely come here. And so that’s when I started preparing for it.

Dianne Howard: Brian and his wife Brenda mowed the vegetation around the ranch as short as possible, moved expensive equipment to safety, and ran the sprinklers day and night. When the power went out, they were able to keep a diesel generator running to supply power to the wells and keep the water flowing. Eventually, help arrived.

Bruce Sitko, Arizona Game & Fish: As we came in to the property, Brian and his wife Brenda were watering down the buildings—a lot of them having wood sides or wood roofs—and watering down the grounds, which were quite dry. And we just asked him how things were, what the conditions were. And he said he was kind of concerned. And we could sense the concern in him. And Brian is a very outgoing, happy individual. And he was a little tense that day.

So, we came back to the office and gathered up enough supplies, food to spend a couple days out there, headed back out, told a couple of our other co-workers what we were doing, and spent the rest of the day—Monday afternoon—spraying down buildings, trying to soak the grounds, and maybe prepare the property for the potential for that fire to move over the property.

Brian Crawford: That day of the fire, when it came, I had eight department employees here from the region one. We expected a Forest Service or an engine, a structure crew that was going to help us. But it was such an intense day for the firefighters—it was the worst day of the fire—it burnt 80,000 acres that day. And so it was just us. They didn’t show. They were busy. You know Nutrioso was burning up. So, we just started. We put a person at every structure with a hose. And we were just getting everything as wet as we could get it. And when it came over the hill, it was blowing hard, and it was roaring like a freight train.

Bruce Sitko: One of our staff, Chris Monyoli, came in about mid-afternoon. He had driven around the south end of the property and had noted—let us know that a spot fire had started about 2 or 3 miles south of Sipe about mid-afternoon.

And 60 mile an hour winds again that day, blowing south to north, right at us. So as the afternoon wore on, the smoke got thicker and thicker, the sky darker and more red as the distant flames reflected off of the sky. Wildlife still moved around.

Dianne Howard: The crew observed that the elk, antelope, and waterfowl in the area were up and moving around but not fleeing. While they were certainly aware of the fire, they continued to go about their regular business of feeding.

Bruce Sitko: As we were soaking the buildings, there was one particular spot next to an outbuilding that had a small hummingbird nest where the parent was feeding two young. And the nest was only a couple feet from the side of the building. We were taking great pains not to hit the nest with water, as the bird flew back and forth from its nest.

Dianne Howard: Eventually, the Sipe crew was ordered off the wildlife area. The Forest Service could see huge fire plumes rising 20,000 feet in the air above the property. If a plume like that had collapsed on them, the consequences could be deadly.

Brian Crawford: I said it was an adrenaline rush. But I was never scared for my life. And I wanted to be here to protect this, whatever I could, because there was hot sparks landing all around us. And there’s many combustibles around this complex. But we were made to leave. It was the Forest Service’s decision that they felt it was unsafe. We didn’t want to go, but we had to follow instructions.

And so we just gassed up the generator and kept the sprinklers going on lawns. And we left after the hot part had gone by. But then we spent the night in town.

Dianne Howard: The next day they were cleared to go back in, but no one knew if the historic ranch house or any of the other buildings had escaped the fire.

Bruce Sitko: Now, as we went in, it was very interesting to see where the fire had gone through that night. It had burned up to some edges of some roads. One side of the road would be burned black. The other side would still have the vegetation there.

But we saw all different types of wildlife still in the area as we drove in. Just a few feet from burned areas, there were elk—groups of elk. And then as we got back over the meadows of Sipe, where the previous day the meadows had been intact and there were antelope out feeding in those meadow bottoms, the majority of the meadows at that point in time were black, about 90% black, but some green spots here and there where vegetation still stood. And as we looked real close, the antelope were still feeding in those small green areas—90% blackened, but they had not fled in fear and panic. They simply moved to one side or another and allowed the fire to go by and moved into some areas of safety or areas that just weren’t going to be impacted by fire. And they were still there. The grass was smoldering. The antelope were still feeding. The elk were still feeding. As we looked up and down the road creek, the waterfowl were still flying up and down the creek. The four ducklings on the Sipe pond were still feeding in the pond.

As we got back to the buildings, fortunately for the grace of God, well, you found that the fire, which had burned within 200 yards of our southern buildings, the wind had shifted at the very literally last second and moved the fire to the side. And it went around the Sipe buildings and then fanned back out to the north. So, the buildings were still intact.

The hummingbird nest that we were taking great care not to hit with water was intact. Although branches and trees were broken out of large trees, the nest held in place, and the mother was still flying back and forth, feeding the young.

Dianne Howard: None of the main structures were lost. However, the fire did consume the historic Nelson Homestead cabin that was built in the late 1800s on the south end of the property.

Brian Crawford: There are some areas back up against the forest here that was thick timber that burnt very hot. And that was a bad fire that will take years to repair.

Bruce Sitko: And every time that I talk about that scenario, and I look at the photos of Brian standing in different places on the property that he’s put his life into, I get emotional. And still here almost a year later, it’s hard to talk about it. It means a lot to quite a few of us for many, many different reasons.

So, we’re very thankful for what happened, for the hard work, and even putting our personal safety at risk to a certain degree in the face of the fire. Quite a few of our folks really stepped up and did what they thought was right at that particular time.

Dianne Howard: The efforts to save Sipe were only one example of what was happening all over the area. While the main buildings at the wildlife area were saved, the town of Greer wasn’t so lucky. Twenty-one homes in the small hamlet were lost.

Jim Zornes: Probably, the biggest thing in Greer was the wind—again, dry weather winds. Of course, the fire burns the most intense with the wind. And we had been battling around Greer, trying to keep it out of town. And it kept creeping down the mountain. And then the wind would pick it up. And it’d just make runs in towards town.

But the wind was very strong that day. And once again, it was a combination of bad things and good things coming together. Bad things being the wind and the weather still extremely dry, and the good thing was the treatment. And so the treatment areas around Greer itself allowed us to more effectively manage the fire.

Rick Davalos: Well, Greer sits down in a little bit more of a rugged valley than Alpine or, say, Nutrioso, where some of those areas were so steep that they could not thin in that. So, it basically came down some of those very steep slopes that were not thinned and came into town that way.

And those were lined up. When you have a drainage that lines up with the wind, that also contributes to those factors substantially. So, the fire is able to move right down into those communities.

Dianne Howard: While the massive fire was causing havoc for firefighters and property owners, the wildlife that live in the forests seemed to be doing their best to stay out of harm’s way.

Jim Paxon: If we’ll stop and consider, these animals evolved with fire. They’re fire adapted. And we can look at the small mammals and the reptiles will actually go into burrows when the fire comes. And they stay there until it cools off. The birds will fly away unless they’re nesting. And if they’re on a nest, we’re going to lose a lot of individuals but not populations. The elk and the deer simply move away from the fire because they feel the heat, and they don’t want to be there, but they meander away. They don’t run pell-mell.

Bruce Sitko: It was interesting to see that and to see that these animals just within 12 hours of a major fire event going through their area were just doing business as normal, and feeding, and getting on with life. And the fire was a great inconvenience. And in some cases, some animals did not survive. But for the most part, they do better than people think that they do.

Jim Zornes: We heard rumors. And like I say, I know of one that was confirmed. It was an elk. And I believe there was one deer that they found dead. There could have been more. We didn’t see them. And we were out there a lot, I can tell you that.

Dianne Howard: The number of animals that were killed or injured in the fire turned out to be minimal, but as a precaution, Game and Fish set up a wildlife triage area in Eagar. Staff from the Adobe Mountain Wildlife Center was on hand to deal with any casualties.

Mike Demlong, Arizona Game & Fish: This afternoon, we got a call from the firefighters fighting the Wallow fire, reporting an elk calf that was downed in a burned area. They reported the calf had been there all morning long and hadn’t moved. So, Arizona Game and Fish Wildlife Emergency team moved out there to see what was going on.

When we got there, we found a calf in the middle of a burned area. We could get within 10 feet, and it wouldn’t move. Practically, we could touch it till it finally got up, and then we noticed a couple of the hooves were burned. So, we went back to our truck, got our supplies. We managed to put a lasso around it and rush in, and get a bunch of guys around it. And we practically carried the calf back to the trailer. The elk calf we just received has probably been laying out in the field for at least seven days. The fire in Greer started a week ago. And the calf looked like it hasn’t moved since. It’s very dehydrated. It’s thin. It’s lethargic. And as you can see, as soon as we got fluids into it, it popped right back up. And it looks like it’s going to be all right.

Dianne Howard: Unfortunately, the burns to the calves hooves were too severe to be treated. So, even after the valiant attempt to save its life, the elk had to be euthanized.

Also, treated at the center was a young red-tailed hawk that had been found by a family from Eagar when they were evacuating. It appeared the juvenile bird had been on the ground for several days.

Mike Demlong: The red-tailed hawk was a nestling that had been pushed from its nest a little prematurely by the smoke and the flames. We brought it back here to our facilities—this converted snack bar—and gave it fluids and some baby food. And it’s almost like brand new again. So, it’s prognosis is good. We hope to turn it loose this fall.

Dianne Howard: Once the young hawk was strong enough, it was transferred to the Adobe Mountain Wildlife Center in Phoenix where it received a complete examination for injuries, smoke inhalation, singed feathers, or anything that might affect its ability to survive in the wild. The bird, nicknamed Wallow, proved to be healthy. So, it was placed in a large flight pen with another red tail, so it could build up its strength and learn how to hunt.

Sandy Cate, Arizona Game & Fish: We put the bird in there and gave it a few days, so we could observe it and see how it was doing. It was flying very well. It didn’t have any indications of any problems when it would fly, that it was having breathing issues, which was another indicator that there wasn’t any of the smoke damage that we might be concerned about, given that it came from the fire.

And as the bird would fly back and forth, we didn’t have to haze it, which means we go in and force it to fly back and forth to build up those muscles. Everything was instinctive. This bird was just one of those really aggressive birds.

Dianne Howard: Three months after she was blown out of her nest by the fire, Wallow was ready to be released back into the wild. But not all the birds in the fire area were as lucky.

Jim Paxon: This is prime wild turkey habitat, and we know that the turkeys took a big hit because it was nesting season. The turkeys were either on eggs or had brand new chicks. And they simply couldn’t get away from the fire. We lost a lot of individuals, but the population will rebound. In 2 to 3 years, we’ll have a plethora of turkey.

Dianne Howard: Black bears wearing telemetry collars were monitored and found to have remained within their home area and survived the fire. The fire also burned through the Mexican wolf population’s habitat in the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area.

Bruce Sitko: And as the fire moved through the suspected den areas, and monitoring with telemetry, our field staff noted that these adult animals were not moving very far from where the den packs were, which gave them some optimistic hope that at least one or more of the pups that were on the ground had still survived.

But once the fire had gone through and they were able to do some checking on the ground, they noted that it didn’t look like we lost any pups out of the Bluestem pack. We didn’t lose anything out of the Hawks Nest pack. Of course, the Paradise pack was outside the perimeter. And they never did verify whether there were any pups produced by the Rim pack. So again, different survival strategies by different types of animals.

Sue Sitko: We can witness this here in this stand. Less than a week after the fire blazed through, you can still see that there are live tree canopies. And there are songbirds all over the place. I can hear yellow-rumped warblers. I have seen northern flickers, American robins, and just now, we found a pygmy nuthatch nest that’s in a snag, a cavity in a snag. The snag was cut for fire safety precautions. And the nest is still active.

Jim Paxon: Wildlife is incredibly resilient in its ability to survive even the most difficult of situations. Thank you for joining us for part one of our special coverage—the Nature of Fire. In next week’s episode, we’ll take a look at ongoing recovery efforts and the commitment it takes to manage this wonderful wildlife resource.

For more information on Arizona Game and Fish, please go to our website (www.azgfd.gov). I'm Jim Paxon for producers Carol Lynde and Gary Schafer, and we'll see you next week.

On screen:
Arizona Wildlife Views
Host
Jim Paxon
Producers
Carol Lynde
Gary Schafer
Narration
Dianne Howard
Jim Harken
Additional Photography
Rick Servatius, Baby 6 Productions
Brian Crawford
Bruce Sitko
Special Thanks to
Jim Zornes
Brian Crawford
Brenda Crawford
Bruce Sitko
Sue Sitko
Rick Davalos
Mike Demlong
Sandy Cate
www.azgfd.gov/tv
www.youtube.com/azgfd

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