Tucson Region

Rains temper wildfire; Tucson still parched

GREEN VALLEY - Crews have begun leaving the 21,900-acre Florida Fire after weekend thunderstorms drenched parts of the Santa Rita Mountains and sparked dangerous new wildfires elsewhere in Arizona. Three homes and 10 unoccupied outbuildings were lost to a fast-moving, 250-acre wildfire along the San Pedro River near Winkelman. The Indian Hills Fire, some 50 miles north of Tucson, also prompted the evacuation of a mobile home park in Dudleyville, said Judy Wood, a fire information officer for the Arizona State Land Department. Aircraft and ground crews were working to contain the blaze as it burned along Arizona 77 and the river. The wind and fire had died down by Sunday night and firefighters had gathered to reassess the situation, Wood said. "Typically, a fire will lay down at night, provided there isn't any additional wind," she said. It's unclear whether the Indian Hills Fire was human- or lightning-caused. There were 125 new fires reported in Arizona and New Mexico by Sunday morning, 95 started by lightning, according to the Southwest Coordination Center in Albuquerque. "There's smoke showing up here, there and everywhere," said George Taylor, a spokes-man for the Arizona Interagency Information Center in Phoenix. At the Florida Fire, the number of personnel dropped to 850, down 150 from Saturday night's total. The reduction is due to the fire's subsidence and the stepped-up initial attack on new fires in the region. Fire officials expect they'll lose another 150 or so firefighters today, and there's even talk the management team may head to South Texas to prepare for Hurricane Emily's arrival. The situation in the Santa Ritas improved dramatically after Saturday's storms dumped one-quarter to one-half inch of rain on the fire's northern edge, and up to one inch on the southern flanks, where fire crews still hadn't completed fuel breaks. Some 300 firefighters had massed in Patagonia on Saturday, ready to begin burning out from southern containment lines, but the rains sent 100 of them packing. Across the mountain, increased humidity has tempered fire behavior, officials reported. Afternoon thunderstorms brought more rain to the area on Sunday, too.

"We've got things relatively confined," incident-commander trainee Edward Kilduff said. "The fire is almost in a holding pattern right now." The most troublesome part of the fire remains the western edge, where flames are about one-half-mile from both the developed portion of Madera Canyon and the telescopes atop Mount Hopkins. But now firefighters aren't sure if the flames will even make it all the way down into Madera Canyon, where a containment line surrounds 30 or so structures. Before the rain, flames had threatened to gather at the base of Mount Hopkins and make a devastating charge to the top. The plan was to ignite the side of the mountain with incendiary devices dropped from helicopters in order to rob the wildfire of fuel. Now, Kilduff said, the fire is unlikely to make any runs up the mountain. "If anything does develop and start heading up Hopkins, we'll be more than prepared," he said. After hearing fire officials' prognosis, Green Valley resident Lew Denny, 81, said he felt reassured. Denny, co-founder of the non-profit Friends of Madera Can-yon, said the big plumes rising above the Santa Ritas a few days ago left him worried about the canyon and a house his group spent $75,000 restoring. But now it appears the fire won't even interfere with educational tours the group runs for schoolchildren. Upcoming tours probably will have a lesson or two on wildfires, he said. The fire, which began July 7 when a lightning bolt ignited a standing dead tree on Florida Peak, was at 40 percent containment Sunday, meaning two-fifths of its perimeter was secure. The suppression effort so far has cost $5.4 million. Elsewhere, crews were scrambling to attack the new fires caused by two straight days of thunderstorms in the Southwest. Four small fires began in remote sections of the Rincon Mountains, east of Tucson, said Marylee Peterson, a spokeswoman for the Coronado National Forest. "They're small in acreage and there's no concern about them at this time," she said. In central Arizona's Prescott National Forest, crews and air tankers were attacking two lightning-sparked fires. The Butte Fire, located 13 miles southwest of Camp Verde, already had burned 1,750 acres, and the Arnold Fire, 10 miles south-southwest of Camp Verde, had reached 200 acres. Both fires were burning through grasses and juniper woodlands, but neither threatened any structures, said Debbie Maneely, a Prescott National Forest spokeswoman.