Arizona firefighters work to save homes WILDFIRES

Oakland Tribune, Jul 8, 2003 by , Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Cooler, more humid weather gave firefighters an assist Monday as a wildfire that already had ravaged a mountain community burned to within a half-mile of an exclusive enclave in the foothills on the city's northern fringe.

Residents of about 200 homes and guests at a resort hotel had been urged to evacuate the Ventana Canyon area Sunday.

Monday's improved weather meant backfire or burnout operations could be scaled back. Crews planned to use aircraft to drop retardant on the flames, said spokesman Pete Davis.

The voluntary evacuation remained in effect, primarily because of concern about residents being too close to fire suppression activities that included drops of 12,000-pound loads of retardant.

The fire has burned at least 70,000 acres.

in the Santa Catalina Mountains, skirted fire lines last week and destroyed six cabins higher in the mountains during the weekend.

The Ventana Canyon area is a high desert enclave in the foothills of the Santa Catalinas. It includes upscale homes and the 400-room Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, said George Heaney, a bureau chief with the Pima County Sheriff's Department.

At higher elevations of the Santa Catalinas, firebreaks were holding Monday around dozens of homes and cabins, several youth camps, an observatory owned by the University of Arizona and communications towers operated by organizations including the Federal Aviation Administration.

The human-caused fire destroyed 317 homes last month in and around the vacation hamlet of Summerhaven, high on Mount Lemmon.

Another Arizona fire burned close to a community of homes and cabins in drought-stricken pine forest but was contained Sunday night at 25 acres and no homes were turned, fire officials said. The fire was near Walker, a hamlet just outside the central Arizona city of Prescott, where a wildfire destroyed six houses last year. About 100 residents had been urged to evacuate.

In New Mexico, a wildfire on Taos Pueblo land was quiet Monday after doubling in size Sunday to 3,000 acres, said fire information officer Iggy Peralta.

Crews planned to work to build firebreaks between the fire and Taos Canyon, which contains summer and year-round homes, bed-and- breakfast inns and rental cabins.

On Friday, the lightning-caused fire burned to within a half-mile of the historic Taos Pueblo village.

Elsewhere, fires also were active Monday in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Utah, the National Interagency Fire Center reported. So far this year, about 923,000 acres of brush, grass and forest have burned, less than one-third the acreage that burned during the same period last year, the center said.

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On the Net:

National Interagency Fire Center: www.nifc.gov

Aspen Fire: www.fs.fed.us/r3/coronado/aspen.html

Northwest Interagency Coordination Center: www.or.blm.gov/nwcc/