2011 Arizona WUI/wildland Fires

On May 29, a human-caused fire started in the Bear Wallow Wilderness area in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona. The Wallow Fire, as it became known, grew to become the largest wildland/WUI fire in Arizona history, burning approximately 520,000 acres in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and another 15,000 acres in New Mexico, and causing the evacuation of thousands people.

But the Wallow wasn’t the sole perpetrator in Arizona this past summer. Three other fires, the Horseshoe Two Fire (now the fourth largest in Arizona history), the Murphy Complex (now the ninth largest) and the Monument Fire, also wreaked havoc on the state. All together, these fires burned just under 900,000 acres, making this past fire season the worst on record for Arizona.

Fire & Containment Factors
The major factors that allowed these fires to grow: wind, low humidity and an abundance of fuels. According to Dugger Hughes, battalion chief for the Northwest Fire District and a Southwest Area Type 1 team commander, the Wallow Fire was able to take off in part because of the winds and the extremely dry winter and spring Arizona had experienced. Hughes responded with his team to both the Wallow and the Horseshoe Two fires. “If you talk to a meteorologist in the area, they’ll tell you it was one of the windiest springs they’ve had in the southwest,” Hughes explains. “Normally on a large-scale fire, you have winds for a couple days, but we had winds on the Horseshoe Two for eight of the 14 days we were there. Conditions were similar on the Wallow; the never-ending winds were one of the most frustrating things we had to deal with.”

Although the overall fire situation in Arizona remained uncontrollable for weeks, particularly on the Wallow Fire, many in the wildland firefighting community weren’t necessarily surprised by the extreme fire behavior, given some of the conditions that were apparent as early as last autumn. In answer to those conditions, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) had begun removing dead or dying trees before the major fires began. It is largely because of these actions that firefighters were eventually able to get a hold of the Wallow Fire. “When the Wallow Fire ran into Alpine, Springerville, Greer, it was obvious that prior thinning was done there,” Hughes says. “That fire was running through the tree-tops, but when it got to the thinned area, it dropped to the ground, which allowed firefighters on the ground to attack it. That pre-work was a big, big deal.”

Working the Wallow
At the height of the Wallow Fire, thousands of firefighters and other resources were deployed to the state, including three Type 1 teams and an area command team that coordinated with the Type 1 teams and addressed concerns of the local jurisdictions, which were eager to receive information about the current status of the fire. Although area command was established early on, by the time they arrived on the Wallow Fire, the media had already started reporting on the fire’s rapid growth and potentially threatened areas, so demand for information from area command was high from the get-go. “Because of the media attention and information sharing, some of the key stakeholders felt they weren’t receiving timely information,” says Sam Whitted, liaison coordinator for area command. “That was one of our major challenges, but once we got into place, we held conference calls, which really de-escalated the stress level for people who had a strong need to have that information.”

Another challenge on the Wallow: structure protection. As with any fire, life safety is the number one priority, followed by structure protection. According to Whitted, given the extreme fire conditions, crews had to perform point protection. “A fire like the Wallow is so large and so intense that you can’t stop it, so we took actions to have the fire go around small communities, such as Alpine, rather than through those communities,” Whitted explains. “We used burnouts, sprinkler systems and other tactics to make that happen. We did lose a few structures, but the number of structures we did save was an incredible piece of good work.”

Full containment was achieved on July 8, with 32 residences and four commercial buildings destroyed, and approximately 16 injuries–but no fatalities. According to Whitted, the successes on the Wallow Fire had a lot to do with training and planning. “In the interface area, you need to train and get involved with the systems that are in place,” he says. “Think about the what-ifs and formulate plans of how you will react if there’s an impending fire coming. Simple things like evacuation plans, keeping citizens informed about what they need to take with them. Tying in and being part of the fire community is a huge deal.” He also notes the need to thin fuels as a means of controlling fire spread and increasing safety levels.  

Working the Horseshoe Two
The Horseshoe Two Fire began on May 8, just three weeks prior to the start of the Wallow Fire, which required some teams to make consecutive deployments with quick turnaround times. Dugger Hughes’ team became the second Southwest Area Type 1 team to be assigned to the Horseshoe Two. Once they received their delegation of authority, Hughes took over as incident commander. “We had about 1,500 people at one time on the Horseshoe Two,” he recalls. “At one point, they said they had deployed 29 Type 1 teams to the southwest region.”

As with the Wallow Fire, due to the Horseshoe Two’s size and the number of teams and resources deployed to the area at one time, coordination and communication were key. “On a fire of this size, one of your main objectives is to bring order to chaos, so when you get in there, you immediately hold a meeting with all the agencies, set up who’s responsible for what, and who’s going to initiate your activities,” Hughes explains. “We also get tied in with local law enforcement, and we try to have multiple public meetings to keep [the community] informed.”

Despite these efforts, Hughes admits there were times when the fire was particularly challenging, given the fact that the Horseshoe Two burned in fuels that did not burn the year before during the first Horseshoe fire, which occurred in almost the same exact spot. “We had several resources, but they couldn’t get around it,” Hughes recalls of the first Horseshoe fire. “That fire eventually burned around 3,500 acres. So the Horseshoe Two started in almost exactly the same spot, but this time, it burned across country that we couldn’t make burn last year. The spotting potential on the Horseshoe Two was so bad, it spotted over our lines. We had a mile of already burned area, but the fire spotted over that by a mile and a half and into a subdivision. When you have conditions like that, it’s not about ‘go put it out.’ Sometimes you need to manage a fire.”

But management proved a bit difficult at times, even with the latest technology on hand. To help track the progress of the Horseshoe Two, Hughes’ team used computerized modeling programs that factor in topography, fuel types, etc., to estimate where and when the flames would move next. “You have to be proactive, not reactive,” Hughes says of using the software. “But on the Horseshoe Two, we had a creek called Rock Creek, and we were concerned that the fire was going to cross that creek at one point and reach a road. The computer software said it would take four days to get to the road–but it actually took only three hours.”

Evacuations were ordered in early June for Paradise, East Whitetail Canyon and the surrounding communities, which also proved challenging given the sheer number of people that had to leave the area. “We don’t like to evacuate an area unless we have to, because with evacuations, you have a lot more moving pieces,” Hughes says. “You have to think about the animals and where they’re going, and shutting off the power, which means everything in people’s freezers will go bad. So you try to factor all that in so you impact people as little as possible.”

The turning point on the Horseshoe Two came when the winds died down, allowing ground crews to become more aggressive in their attacks, and the fire moved to areas with lighter fuel concentrations. Full containment was reached on June 25, after the fire burned 222,954 acres in the Chiricahua Mountains. “This is my 38th fire season, and I don’t ever remember seeing fire like we saw this year,” Hughes notes.