Arizona Wildfires

[Krawlin]

Anyone else been seeing this on the news? I am right in the middle of this ring of wild fires here in Southeastern Arizona. Can see the the smoke cloud from the Horseshoe 2 fire burning over 150,000 acres in the Chiricahua National monument and can see the flames of the Monument Fire from my house, the Monument Fire burning in Coronado National Forest just south of Sierra Vista right near the US/Mexico border is only about 10-15 miles from my house. It's burned over 5000 acres now and 0% contained, thankfully I doubt my place is in any danger since I am in a much more populated area close to the base down here, highly unlikely that they would let it get that far, but it is climbing the ridge of another mountain right next to the first one that burned and spreading onto the valley floor. They've also brought in the "hot shot" crews which I guess are the special wildfire crews for this one and I've heard fire trucks going by all day. The local news is saying that it's burned a few structures so far including a couple of houses in that area. I've also seen on the news now that the Wallow Fire in east central Arizona is the largest in AZ state history at over 450,000 acres burned and spreading/already spread to New Mexico.

I've had friends who grew up in LA tell me that they would never have a house built in the trees because of fires, sadly in this area there are quite a few houses near the Monument Fire in wooded areas and news is saying a couple houses have been burned already and they are evacuating people in that area.

Pretty crazy stuff going on though, we desperately need some rain here in Arizona. What's really bad is that it's way too dry here with no rain in the past few months and the east coast and midwest are getting way too much rain and flooding.


A few pictures of the Monument Fire from earlier today south of Sierra Vista (from the local/Tucson news website, not taken by me)









And one from last night before the winds picked up and made it alot worse today (again, none of these taken by me, all from the local news website)



These pictures seem to be from around noon today as it's looking quite a bit worse now. Where's the rain when we actually need it?

[brainanator]

yikes! Up here in montana we're basically under water. Already gotten way more rain than we usually do the entire year...

Both are natural parts of the environment though, forests have to burn every once in a while, many tree reproductive cycles depend on it.

[Krawlin]

This has been the "perfect storm" for fires down here it seems as a few months ago we had a hard freeze that killed alot of vegetation and with the lack of rain most of it has stayed dead and dry. What is unfortunate in people trying to prevent forest fires and building in and near forest areas is that fires are supposed to happen now and then to thin the forest to prevent massive fires but people try to prevent that and it just grows more and more fuel for a fire and when it goes it's worse than regular naturally occurring fires and we end up with very violent and destructive wild fires. And I've read that since January until now, this area of Arizona (Tucson/Pima County and Sierra Vista/Cochise County) has only gotten 1/2'' of rain, compared the about 3'' that is normal for that period of time around here.

The Monument Fire just south of my town has grown and burned one of the 8900~9000 foot high peaks here (valley floor is around 4300 feet above sea level). The peak that is burning now is Miller Peak and Miller Canyon, the south peak of the Huachuca Mountains.

I am not a religious man by any means, but these are some pretty sad pictures to see. This place is known as "The Lady Of The Mountain" and is a small church, unfortunately burned the church and surrounding homes but the cross and the "lady" made it through -

(Pictures not taken by me, some are from the Monument Fire facebook page)

Before it burned with flames getting close


And the unfortunate site after -




And some other pics of the planes dropping slurry -









Area near church pics above burning, the black smoke is from structures burning -

[Krawlin]

Miller Peak burning, around 7300 feet and up to the peak of around 8900~9000 feet. Note that there is also even more going on to the south of this peak (behind what you see in the pics) -





Moving further down into the canyon towards homes -

[T-birdJunkie]

Don't mind ThunderbirdJunkie, just enjoying Ohio.

Don't miss AZ one bit.

[PBO]

Krawlin, you should send a few of those planes up to Vancouver & collect the Vancouver Canucks supporters who were rioting & drop them on the flames