Tucson Region

Turkey Flat cabin owners thank crews

Cabin owners who returned to Turkey Flat Monday morning said they were grateful that firefighters stopped the fires but wished the crews had dropped a few more trees in the forest surrounding the 74 summer cabins. The fires atop Mount Graham have not been snuffed, but firefighters are confident they soon will be and are to turn over management of the fire to a second-level team this evening. The lightning-caused Nuttall and Gibson fires, fought as one by up to 1,000 firefighters and support personnel, burned mixed conifer forests for three weeks, scarring 29,200 acres. The firefighting cost so far - $8.5 million. The number of personnel fighting the fire has dropped to 650. The firefighters of the Southwest Area Incident Management Team "Type I" force under Dan Oltrogge stopped the Nuttall Fire Complex along the northern spine of the Pinaleno Mountains, keeping it away from 98 summer cabins, a church camp and the $250 million collection of telescopes and equipment at the Mount Graham International Observatory. Gene Robert Larson praised those efforts Monday after visiting the cabins at Turkey Flat. "They did herd that fire around pretty good," said Larson, 74, whose family has owned a cabin in the Pinaleno Mountains for 70 years. "You know it wasn't an easy fire. When it got over there close to the cabins, they really fought," he said. But Larson said he wished the crews had dropped some of the dead and dying trees around the cabins "while they had the chance and the time and the crew." Larson was among a delegation of cabin owners allowed to tour the area Monday. Opening of the highway is at least a week away, Forest Service officials said, and no date has been set for allowing cabin owners to return. The Nuttall Fire Complex is still only 65 percent contained, but crews have built all the line around the fire that needs building. It will die out in sparser vegetation on the lower, northern slopes of the mountains near Safford that are commonly referred to by the name of their highest peak - Mount Graham. Vaughn Grant, a cabin owner who was also on the tour, said the firefighters' strategy was clear on the drive up Swift Trail (Arizona 366) to Turkey Flat. "From Noon Creek to Arcadia, one side is totally black and one side is green," he said. "The fire looked like it came within a quarter mile," he said. "It's just great the cabins are still there. The firefighters did a fantastic job. I was pleased. They had their big 'pumpkins' full of water on the perimeters and the sprinklers set and ready to go, they'd done some trimming and cutting down," he said. But Vaughn, an insurance agent who has written policies for many Turkey Flat cabins, said he, too, was "disappointed" that more of the thick, dry forest around the cabins had not been cleared. "I don't quite know what to say," Vaughn said. "It's almost criminal for them to say 'no, we're not taking dead trees.' " He said the cabins are still surrounded by trees the Forest Service tagged as being in danger of falling over or dropping limbs on cabins. Dean McAlister, fire management officer for the Coronado National Forest, said those marked trees were indeed "a safety hazard for falling on the cabins" but stood so close to them that it will take more equipment than the chainsaws the firefighters carried to clear them safely. "While our firefighters are fairly skilled with dropping trees, we didn't want to take the responsibility for dropping a tree on a cabin." On Monday, firefighters turned their attention to cleaning up and rehabilitating areas they had cleared by hand and with bulldozers to stop the fires. Officials warned that rains could run off the blackened slopes quickly, producing debris-carrying floods. Significant runoff and debris has already been seen in Noon Creek.