Yarnell on alert as winds fan flames near site of blaze that killed 19
PHOENIX — Residents in the Yarnell area — scene of the 2013 disaster that killed 19 firefighters — were again put on alert Thursday afternoon as winds fanned the flames of a wirefire that threatened the mountain hamlet.
The Bureau of Land Management reported about 2:15 p.m. MT Thursday that activity on the north side of the fire had increased.
An evacuation order remained in effect for about 250 Yarnell residents.
The wind picked up Thursday afternoon and fire officials grew concerned that the blaze could cross State Route 89, according to Yavapai County Sheriff's officials.
The activity forced officials to ask residents of 30 addition homes to leave their residences.
The blaze had burned about 2 square miles by midday Thursday and was 10% contained.
Weather conditions were expected to be mixed but offered hope on Thursday morning that Yarnell would be spared.
“We’re expecting dry weather today,” said Robert Rickey, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Flagstaff. “Winds are going to be out of the southwest, gusting up to 20 or 25mph.”
Friday is expected to be wetter, with a possibility of “some isolated showers in the area,” Rickey said. Breezy southwest winds, with 20 to 25 mph gusts, should continue.
“Then it goes back to dry weather on Sunday,” he said.
Denny Foulk, emergency manager for Yavapai County, said officials plan to keep much of Yarnell evacuated through Thursday.
Homes on the west side of Yarnell, where several residents stayed put, remained without water and electricity as of Thursday morning, officials said, because the fire damaged several electricity poles.
Several residents who were evacuated from their Wednesday evening were anxiously waiting at a gas station parking lot next to the Highway 89 closure to see when they’d be let back into town.
Peggy Starcher, a Yarnell resident whose home was hundreds of feet from the blaze, was told by a Yavapai County sheriff’s deputy she had to leave because the fire was burning too close to her home.
Starcher didn’t have time to gather much. She had her two dogs, but her cats stayed behind.
She said she left the front door of her home open, with the hopes that her cats could be able to escape if the fire damaged her house.
Starcher and several other displaced residents did not go to the Yavapai College center in Prescott, about 30 miles away, where volunteers had set up a shelter for evacuees.
Instead, many of them spent the night in their cars in the parking lot of the Mountainaire Gas Station.
The gas station, like most homes in the area, lost power during the fire, though it stayed open throughout the night to accommodate displaced residents and fire personnel.
“It’s always been peaceful and quiet here,” she said, “until this.”
Several residents and passers-by drove up to the roadblock set up next to the gas station Thursday morning, wondering when the roads through town would reopen.
Each time, officials turned them back.
About 10 a.m. Thursday, Starcher sat in her car parked underneath some shade – waiting.
The Blaze
Firefighters battled flames as high as 15 feet yesterday, according to fire official Mike Reichling.
Topography and weather have been key differences between Wednesday’s fire and the 2013 blaze, Reichling said. In 2013, the fire was sparked in more open terrain on the opposite end of town — and winds blew the fire in a “U-turn” back toward homes and structures, Reichling said.
Local fire agencies, along with the federal Bureau of Land Management, responded to the fire. About 240 firefighters were on the scene by midday.
"This is priority one right now — the top priority in the state,” Dolores Garcia, a wildfire spokeswoman for the BLM, said Wednesday.
Garcia said crews were attacking the fire from the air and the ground. That included firefighters from Yarnell, Congress, Peeples Valley, the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service. Four elite "type-1" wildland fire crews had been dispatched by Thursday afternoon.
Garcia said conditions in central Arizona are extremely dry with a high fire danger.
The Yarnell Hill FireYarnell was the scene of one of the deadliest wildfires in history.
On June 28, 2013, a lightning storm ignited the Yarnell Hill Fire in the high desert northwest of Phoenix. Two days later, the brush fire that covered a few hundred acres exploded across 13 square miles.
Hundreds of people fled from Yarnell, Glen Ilah and Peeples Valley as flames destroyed 127 homes.
The Granite Mountain Hotshots, who had been hand-cutting firebreaks along the blaze's flank, descended from a mountain ridge into a bowl where they became trapped. The 19 men deployed protective shelters, but all were overcome by a wall of fire so hot it fractured boulders.
Memorials for the fallen firefighters played out for months, and questions about what went wrong that day have lingered.
Chuck Overmyer watched the latest fire burn from his home in Glen Ilah, a subdivision across the highway from Yarnell that was devastated by the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire.
Overmyer and his wife, Nina Bill, lost their home and nearly all of their possessions in that blaze and had to rebuild.
“It’s horrible,” he said Wednesday evening in a telephone interview as he watched a helicopter drop water on the blaze and juggled a steady stream of calls to his cellphone.
He said he has no plans to evacuate and didn’t feel in danger at the moment.
“If it comes this way, I’m going to grab the garden hose. I’m going down with the house this time.”
Contributing: Anne Ryman, Dennis Wagner, Lindsey Collom, Adrian Hedden and Alexis Egeland, The Arizona Republic; Doyle Rice, Paste BN. Follow Ricardo Cano and Ron Dungan, on Twitter: @Ricardo_Cano1 and @exploreaz.