Tucson Region

Crews facing near-vertical slopes

GREEN VALLEY - More than 100 firefighters wrestled with brutal terrain Friday as they tried to stop a 50-acre fire atop the Santa Rita Mountains from spreading farther through an overgrown forest. The lightning-sparked Florida Fire, burning entirely in a wilderness area of the Coronado National Forest, posed no threat to structures and was about four miles from telescopes atop Mount Hopkins. But in a worst-case scenario, flames could eventually menace Madera Canyon, district ranger Keith Graves said. The popular hiking and birding area remained open Friday, but trails on the northern and eastern flanks of the Santa Ritas were closed. With the scorching weather expected to last for days, fire officials marshaled a sizable attack on the blaze, named for a nearby peak. By Friday evening, four elite "hotshot" crews were assigned to the fire. They were using hand tools to widen pre-existing trails with hopes of converting them into fuel breaks. "It'll be a couple of days before we know what we've gotten our teeth into," said Jonetta Holt, a spokeswoman for the firefighters. Forest Service officials ordered air tankers Thursday evening, shortly after thunderstorms pelted the Santa Ritas with lightning bolts but offered few raindrops to put out the fire. The first tanker, however, didn't drop its load of retardant until 1:30 p.m. Friday and the entire aerial attack was called off several hours later due to turbulence, Graves said. With the Southwest at the peak of its wildfire season, there's stiff competition for air tankers, hotshot crews and other resources. A dozen fires larger than 100 acres were burning in the region Friday, according to the Southwest Coordination Center in Albuquerque. Crews that hiked into the Santa Ritas were hampered by near-vertical slopes. Burning wood and pine cones rolled downhill to ignite smaller fires below. Firefighters are using low-impact techniques because the blaze is in a federal wilderness area, but they have authorization to use chainsaws when necessary, Graves said. Aside from a small wildfire in 1992, this section of the Santa Ritas hasn't burned in at least a half-century, allowing fuels to build up to dangerous levels, forest officials said. The Coronado National Forest transferred control of the suppression effort to a regional management team Friday evening and firefighters were massing at Continental Elementary School, 1991 E. Whitehouse Canyon Road. After he took a flight over the Santa Ritas, incoming incident commander Larry Raley said the fire had potential to grow much larger. "The weather conditions are ripe," he said. "There are not many choices for control or containment lines." From atop Mount Hopkins, electronics technician Jonathan Labbe said the staff wasn't too worried about the fire making it to the telescopes. "We see a lot of smoke, but no flames yet," he said by phone Friday afternoon. "It's still too far away to look like it'll reach us. It'll have to travel over Mount Wrightson and we'd definitely have a big warning." Mount Hopkins is home to seven telescope projects operated by the Smithsonian Institution's Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. The largest, the 21-foot Multiple Mirror Telescope, is jointly run with the University of Arizona. The Florida Fire has mostly stayed on the eastern side of the Santa Ritas' spine, but some flames have spilled over onto the range's western slopes. From Tucson, a small plume of milky smoke was visible throughout the day. Empire Fire nearly contained

Another lightning-sparked fire seven miles northeast of Sonoita is close to being corralled. By Friday evening, 85 firefighters had achieved about 60 percent containment on the 600-acre Empire Fire, meaning three-fifths of its perimeter wasn't at risk of expanding. Fire officials expect full containment by 6 p.m. today, said Dan Moore, a fire information officer for the Bureau of Land Management. The fire, burning in grasslands dotted with mesquites and oaks in Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, wasn't threatening any structures. Monsoon trapped in Mexico

Isolated thunderstorms like the ones that ignited the Florida and Empire fires remain a possibility through the weekend. But the full-fledged monsoon is still trapped in Northern Mexico. For Southern Arizona's summer rainy season to get going, a high-pressure system now in Sonora needs to migrate north to the Four Corners region so its clockwise rotation can steer moisture here from the south and east. Computer models suggest that may start to happen around Wednesday, said Emil Krug, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Tucson. "We're looking for an increased chance of precipitation toward the middle of next week," he said. Friday's high temperature of 106 degrees was the 25th day in a row of triple-digit heat in Tucson. The record is 39 days, set June 7 through July 15, 1987. The long-range forecast is for temperatures above the century mark all next week, with highs in Tucson perhaps eclipsing 110 degrees Tuesday.