Daisy Mountain personnel aid in battle against Wallow Fire

MARC BUCKHOUT ~ MANAGING EDITOR ~6/29/2011

Today marks one month since the Wallow Fire,
now the largest wild fire in state history, started burning in northeastern Arizona.
The blaze, which has burned more than 538,000 acres and was approximately 82 percent contained as of press time, has brought in firefighters from across the country to battle a fire that has threatened the communities of Greer, Springerville, Sunrise,
Eager, Alpine, Luna and Nutrioso and such recreational landmarks as Apache National Forest, Hannigan Meadow and Big Lake.
Of the 3,000 plus firefighters that have contributed to the fight, nine are members of the Daisy Mountain Fire Department, serving the communities of Anthem, New River, Desert Hills and Tramonto.
While some members of the department have returned to the Valley after two weeks
worth of work others are still fighting the fire.
Mike Parks, a member of Daisy Mountain since July 2006, was one of the firefighters that was sent to fight the fire on June 2, arriving in Alpine in the early hours of June 3, five days after what is believed to be a man-made blaze started.
“I never thought in a million year that it would grow to this size, but this was the most stubborn, ferocious fire of my career,” he said. “The wind was the biggest factor.”
Randy Clark, a 20-year member of the Daisy Mountain Fire Department and a battalion chief, was also among the group that arrived in Alpine in the early hours of June 3.
His initial assignment was to protect the Tal Wi-Wi Lodge in Alpine.
“When we got up there it was extremely smoky,” he said. “The fire was in the tree line of Alpine. By the time we got there the town had already been evacuated and we knew we were in for a battle.”
Along with dry and windy conditions, Clark said other factors made the job, which consisted partly of clearing brush around the resort and surrounding homes, difficult.
“Right away you notice it when you’re working at 8,500 feet elevation,” he said.
“That combined with the amount of smoke we were breathing in made for a real challenging situation.”
Clark said the combination of factors led numerous fire fighters to get regular nose bleeds. And while the temperatures are now reaching in excess of 110 degrees in the Valley nighttime temperatures at those elevations were sinking into the high 20s.
“There’s a big difference between being at home fighting structure fires and being up there fighting forest fires,” Clark explained. “With a structure fire I guess the best analogy is you’re in a sprint. You go full out, but it might only be fighting for as few as a couple minutes up to a couple hours. When you’re out battling a forest fire it’s a marathon. We were putting in 16 hour days of almost constant work.”
Jay Walter has seen plenty of those 16 hour days of late. He also arrived in Northeastern Arizona in early June, but after two weeks of fighting the Wallow Fire in and around Greer and Springerville he was sent down to Sierra Vista in southern Arizona to battle the Monument Fire.
After a week in Sierra Vista, the seven-year veteran paramedic of Daisy Mountain was home for two days only to be sent back to the Wallow Fire, this time to fight the blaze in western New Mexico.
“It has already been a busy fire season and I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen the last of it,” Walter said. “When you have a continuing drought cycle in Arizona, where we’ve had multiple years with lack of rain, you have trees and vegetation that are extremely stressed you have some very dry fuels that are prone to ignition. I don’t think we envisioned it being the largest fire in the state’s history, but when you look at it closer and then consider the extreme winds there wasn’t a lot that was going to slow this fire down.”
Despite the adverse conditions Walter said he was proud of some of the accomplishments that were managed.
“In Greer my group was responsible for the structure protection of the town,” he said. “Between people’s homes and some commercial structures you’re looking at maybe 300-400 structures. We lost 22, a lot of them on the south end of town, but it could have been a lot worse. We stayed in there and fought it the best we could.”
While a lot of the work was done in the middle of town there was also plenty to be done in far more remote locations.
Parks’ assignment was to try and protect Big Lake, located approximately 30 miles south of Springerville and Eager.
“I grew up in those woods,” he said. “I went to a lot of these places as a child, as far back as when I was in diapers. When we got the job of protecting Big Lake, the area store,
visitor’s center and camp grounds, I was excited.”
With winds consistently reaching 45 miles per hour attempts to create fire breaks, digging trenches and burning ground ahead of the fire to attempt to cut off its fuel supply, regularly were unsuccessful.
“One day our group was working and we’re probably 1.5 miles ahead of the fire, and we we’re having silver dollar sized burning embers falling down around us,” Parks said. “It was so windy, we’d end up with so many spot fires across the line we had established we had to pull out of some areas. At one point we were in the process of evacuating and the smoke was so thick we couldn’t see beyond the hood of the truck.”
Clark said he and his group had similar experiences.
“It seemed like the whole first week we were out there, every time we put a control line down the wind would blow the flames right through it,” he said. “When you end up facing 200 foot flames there’s not a lot you can do with your hose other than get out of the way.”
Clark said the sound of forest fires can be intimidating.
“If you’ve ever stood near the train tracks it sounds a lot like when a freight train is coming,” he said. “First you think it’s the wind. Then it gets closer and you feel like your standing near a jet engine. It’s pretty intense.”
For Parks, as much as the physical toll of a demanding two week assignment and
the imminent danger faced, the emotional toll was equally taxing.
“I’m a big outdoor person,” he said. “I love nature and it was really tough for me to take thinking my kids will never see what Big Lake used to look like, how I remember it from my childhood. It will take hundreds of years for the area to recover, if it ever does and that was heartbreaking to me. I took it pretty personally to see all that land go up in flames and for us in a lot of instances, be powerless to stop it.”
Despite the losses Walter said that lessons learned from the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, which took place in 2002 and up until now had been the largest fire in the state’s history, have been beneficial in fighting the Wallow Fire.
“Having been through that and learned from it, I think we were definitely more prepared,” he said. “We were able to recognize quicker that we’d
need additional teams and resources to deal with what we were up against.”
While the Wallow Fire saw more burned Walter and Clark point out that far fewer homes were lost.
“I’ve been a fire fighter for more than 20 years. When you think of the size of this fire, how many people were involved in fighting it and to know how nasty it was, I thank God that nobody lost their life,” Clark said. “Unfortunately some people lost their homes and businesses, but all things considered I think we’ve been pretty lucky.”
Despite the sting of the losses, Parks said he was reminded of the importance of the job he and his colleagues do on the night they were sent home.
“We’d been eating freeze dried meals for two weeks so the night we got released we stopped at an Arby’s in Eager,” he said. “An elderly gentleman came up to us. He was a tough looking old guy. By the looks of him he probably hadn’t cried in probably 50 years, but he broke down in tears in front of us. He was trying to thank us for saving his home, but he was struggling just to form a sentence he was sobbing so hard. That’s when it really hits home what you’re doing. We’re out there trying to save the squirrels and the trees, but the people that live out there depend on us too. This guy had lived out there his entire life
and all his possessions and memories were in his home. That gives you a good feeling for what you’re doing.”