Arizona / West

$500,000 will cut flood effects of Pinaleno fire

SAFFORD - Just one-tenth of the Nuttall Complex wildfire burned severely, but the federal government will spend nearly $500,000 to take the edge off flooding that threatens people like Mary Jane Lee. The 66-year-old lives in a trailer beside Frye Creek, downstream from the 29,400-acre fire area in the Pinaleno Mountains. After watching flames glow above on Mount Graham, Lee and her husband now look for storm clouds that could unleash a torrent on the charred slopes above their home. "My trailer is right there by that creek bed," Lee said. "If it comes up a lot heavier, like they expect, it could just carry our trailer off." The Daley Estates section of Thatcher, with about 600 trailers and houses, has flooded several times in recent years, even before flames reduced ground cover to white ash and made the soil impermeable in parts of the Pinalenos, 75 miles northeast of Tucson. "Anything that will hit up there is coming down. Nothing is going to soak in," Thatcher Mayor Bob Rivera said. Graham County Supervisor Drew John said he's been told runoff may increase by three to five times. "That scares us a lot," he said. With hopes of curbing post-fire erosion and flooding, the Coronado National Forest has already had $431,828 approved for the recovery. "We'll have the money in two or three days, which is unheard of for government agencies," Henry Shovic, leader of the fire's recovery team, told about two dozen Safford residents Monday evening. "This incident on the hill was a moderate to low severity event. However, there will be local, high risks." By comparison, the 84,750-acre Aspen Fire on Mount Lemmon - which had 40 percent of its acreage burn severely - generated a recovery bill of $2.23 million. That fire, plus the Bullock and Oracle Hill blazes of 2002, caused damaging flooding in Sabino Canyon and Catalina. On Aug. 14, 2003, publisher Jim Huntington was killed when a monsoon thunderstorm dropped 1.5 inches of rain in 25 minutes near Oracle, sending an 8- to 12-foot wall of water toward his home in Bonito Canyon. On Mount Graham, much of the money will go toward using an airplane to spray three types of grass seed on about 3,000 acres of severely burned terrain. Crews will also put up warning signs, replace culverts so they don't get clogged and clear drainages to prevent debris dams from forming - then failing. Work is expected to begin next week. "Only 10 percent of this area is truly black. In many fires, having that little blackened area would mean I'd go home because there's no problem, but that's not the case here," Shovic said. Because the Pinalenos are so rocky and steep - jutting up nearly 7,000 feet from the desert - flash floods were common in the range even without fire's effects. Now, with runoff expected to multiply, there's even more of a threat to Arizona 366, bridges, trails and picnic grounds. The danger extends to the base of Southern Arizona's tallest mountain, where homes are sprinkled amid the canals, dams and other water works of the Gila River Valley. Shovic, a geographer and soil scientist with the Gallatin National Forest in Montana, told Safford-area residents to expect floodwaters to be black with ash for up to a year. He also cautioned them not too expect too much from the rehabilitation. "We nudge this ecosystem a little so it can heal," he said. So far, the Pinalenos haven't suffered any damaging downpours. An automated rain gauge near the top of the mountain recorded a half-inch of rain a few times, but that hasn't had any influence on downstream flows, said Dean McAlister, fire management officer for the Coronado National Forest. Like much of the funding for fighting big forest fires, the money for recovery will come from a national fund, not the Coronado, Forest Supervisor Jeanine Derby said. "It we can take care of the few trouble spots," she said, "things will be fine and in a few years we'll be seeing new aspen groves coming up."