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Humidity, rain aid newly optimistic Graham fire crews

SAFFORD - Optimism replaced nervousness among Mount Graham firefighters Thursday as humidity, light rainfall and firefighting activity reduced the risk from two blazes to cabins and the telescopes on the mountain. A commander of the firefighting effort said Thursday evening that he's optimistic that the cabins and the University of Arizona telescope complex can escape destruction if the higher humidity that arrived Thursday continues and firefighters keep successfully digging fire lines and back-burning potentially dangerous fuel loads. The threats to the cabins at the Turkey Flat and Columbine areas haven't disappeared. The fires are burning between one-half and three-quarters of a mile from them. But the scopes appear to be relatively safe because firefighters have surrounded them with a fire line that has burned a "black line" around the scopes. The Nuttall and Gibson fires increased in size Thursday to 27,000 acres total from 24,928 the day before. But firefighters also raised the containment level around the blazes to 35 percent Thursday from 25 percent Wednesday. Some of the 950 firefighters in the Safford area could start leaving in the next two or three days. Although some will be replaced, the overall number is likely to shrink. "We feel real good. The fire didn't do anything today," said Paul Summerfelt, deputy incident commander of the firefighting effort that has now cost about $6.5 million over the past two weeks. "We made a lot of progress today. We don't anticipate any real problems. Everything is going fine." The fires have apparently done significant damage to a 1,961-acre spruce-fir forested area at the mountaintop that Congress set aside to protect the endangered red squirrel when it approved construction of the telescopes back in 1988. About 60 percent of what's called the red squirrel refugium has been affected by fire, although not every inch of ground inside that area has been burned, Summerfelt said. The area apparently was nowhere near the squirrel habitat it used to be, however, because insect infestation has destroyed many of the trees. Squirrel numbers there have dropped from 72 in 1997 to 8 in 2001. The squirrels have apparently moved downhill into other forested lands, although scientists say they were starting to recolonize the area before the latest fire. The only property damage so far has been to the steps of a lookout tower and to a cinderblock structure used to store electrical equipment. Both facilities lie on Heliograph Peak, on the southwest corner of the Gibson Fire. Although a host of government radio communications towers on the peak weren't damaged, the electronic equipment operating the towers may have been damaged. That disrupted some radio communications for some private companies and government agencies in the area. The full extent of damage wasn't known Thursday because inspectors weren't able to enter the area. With firefighters still conducting back-burn activity along the road to the towers, "it was too dangerous to go up there," Summerfelt said. Authorities hope to inspect the towers today. At the observatory, the fire in a fire line burned Tuesday night and has moved away from the telescopes, Summerfelt said. The firefighters don't expect to reach the standard 100 percent containment of the two fires because they aren't digging fire lines along the blazes' north side. There, the mountains drop quickly off into desert areas, where the fire risk is much less severe. Earlier Thursday, a hotshot crew from Northern California prepared to start burning around the base of the mountain to try to protect a campground in the Noon Creek area at about 4,800 feet in elevation from having to bear the brunt of the blaze. The Lassen Hotshots were joined by crews from the Northwest Fire/Rescue District in the Tucson area, who were thinning and otherwise clearing juniper, piñon and ponderosa pine, scrub oak and manzanita trees and shrubs to give the fire less fuel to burn as it roared down the mountain. As the chain saws whirred, huge clouds of black, gray and brownish smoke billowed a few hundred yards higher up on the mountain. Patches of flames occasionally burst into view through the smoke from the Gibson Fire's southeast flank. "We've been on top for the last eight days, at 10,000 feet," said John Bristow, superintendent of the hotshot crew that hails from Susanville, Calif., about 80 miles north of Reno, Nev. "Now, we're preparing to burn around the bottom, trying to find a place to go underneath the fire." Earlier Thursday, Bristow said he was optimistic of making the mountain safe for about six dozen cabins in the Turkey Flat area by the day's end, barring any problems with erratic winds. "We have a containment line in. We're coming down the ridge line. North of the cabins and everything north of that, we're thinning out all the available fuels." "It's never routine. We're trying to stay one step ahead of it. It's frustrating. We can't go down off the ridge lines without risking our safety. We can't put people on the sides of the ridges without compromising safety. It's much, much steeper below there. In some places there are 1,000-foot dropoffs." Standing in the campground at a slightly higher point - about 5,200 feet - Northwest Fire foreman Stuart Rodeffer watched his crews clear the trees in an effort to protect the campground. The group was clearing a 10-foot-wide path - "something we can ignite from. We're trying to preserve a pocket of green," Rodeffer said.