Tucson Region

As Santa Ritas fire grows, officials are confident of structures' safety

GREEN VALLEY - The 22,000-acre Florida Fire continues to march toward telescopes atop Mount Hopkins, but fire officials are expressing confidence that structures there and in Madera Canyon will be spared from the flames. "We're the No. 1 priority fire in the country," incident commander Dan Oltrogge said Friday. "If we're asking for something, we're getting it." The Florida Fire could grow to more than 60,000 acres if the monsoon fails to kick in over the next few days and the blaze expands to new containment lines, he said. Moisture already in the region caused thunderstorms to fire along the border Friday, and there's a 20 percent chance for rain today, according to the National Weather Service. But the atmosphere is forecast to dry out then as a high-pressure system descends south into Arizona. "It isn't until we get into next week when we can start to bring up the moisture," said Chris Rasmussen, a weather-service meteorologist. The remnants of Hurricane Emily might help spur the summer rainy season toward the middle of next week. The high is also forecast to move toward the Four Corners, where its clockwise motion can tap moisture to our east and south. A high of 107 made Friday the 32nd day in a row of triple-digit heat in Tucson - the third-longest streak on record. The Florida Fire, named for a nearby peak, began July 7 when a lightning bolt ignited a standing dead tree in the Mount Wrightson Wilderness. About 850 personnel are assigned to the fire, and the $3.5 million suppression effort is racking up $650,000 to $700,000 in added costs each day. Madera Canyon remains situated below an active front of flames, and firefighters already have cleared fuel breaks around 30 homes, lodges and sheds. Crews on Friday set fires to clear more vegetation in the canyon and have established a trigger point for when they'll set burnouts from the fuel breaks closest to the buildings. The fire has crossed through Josephine Saddle and become seated on Jack Mountain, where heavy helicopters reportedly checked its progress with water drops. But fire mangers don't want the flames to gather at the base of Mount Hopkins and make a charge to the top. The Smithsonian Institution's Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory runs seven projects atop Mount Hopkins, including the 21-foot Multiple Mirror Telescope. To protect the instruments, air tankers have painted a thick belt of flame retardant around the site. By Friday night, crews were preparing to set fire to the downhill side of that slurry line by dropping incendiary devices from helicopters known as pingpongs. The hope is for the intentional fire to creep downhill, meet the wildfire and give the threatened telescopes a blackened buffer. "I'm a confident kind of guy, but it's chancy," Oltrogge said. "The only thing we have to hold it is the retardant line." Fire managers have told observatory officials they're confident crews can defend the instruments, spokesman Dan Brocious said. "On the other hand," he said, "our telescopes were never built to go through forest fires, so we're anxious." Officials are calling the fire 40 percent contained, meaning two-fifths of the perimeter is considered secure. Fire activity is minimal on the entire northeastern front of the blaze, and officials say there is no threat to Green Valley, Patagonia, Sonoita or other communities at the base of the Santa Ritas. As the fire backs down the mountain, it is running into sparser desert fuels and is easier to control, officials said. Oltrogge, who flew over the fire Friday, said the burn pattern atop the mountain appears to be the typical mosaic, with some areas completely blackened by high-intensity flames and other areas visited only by ground fires that consumed fuel on the forest floor. This is the third time in as many years that Oltrogge's so-called Type I team has been called into Southern Arizona to fight a fire atop a forested "sky island" range. "Sky-island fires on the Coronado National Forest are tough business," he said. "The terrain is extremely rugged, the weather is usually extremely hot and the fire behavior is bad."