"Wallow Fire" in Bear Wallow Wilderness

[azbackpackr]

Lots of activity in Springerville this morning, with the Prescott Hot Shots arriving at Safeway for a snack, and other buses full of firefighters seen on the highway heading for the "Wallow Fire" in Bear Wallow Wilderness Area, south of Hannagan. The smoke is not that visible, although my daughter was over at Hulsey yesterday and saw the smoke. I was up at Big Lake early this morning and could see only a haze of smoke south of there, not a big plume. I think winds too strong for it to plume up much. I'm back in Flag now, so I won't get the firsthand news any more.

Oh, and no campfires or charcoal grills allowed in the campgrounds since last night in Apache-Sitgreaves NF (Big Lake, Hannagan, etc.) I think stoves still allowed. Not sure about non-campgrounds.

Here's a news story on the Wallow Fire, but as of this writing it has not made it to inciweb yet. (Maybe tomorrow?)
( dead link removed )

Perimeter Map [ Wallow Fire Map 2011-06-27 :: map ]
Inciweb ( dead link removed )

[Trishness]

According to the press conference at 10 AM this morning 336,167 acres are torched (less than what they had estimated yesterday) but it is still zero contained. 6 structures in Greer are compromised but they won't release any information on which ones until owners are contacted. Greer is still very "hot". They are very concerned about Blue River area.

[Al_HikesAZ]

HOW YOU CAN HELP - http://www.azfamily.com/news/wildfires/ ... 59759.html

azfamily.com
Posted on June 9, 2011 at 10:55 AM Updated today at 11:22 AM

PHOENIX - 3TV has partnered with Bashas' Family of Stores and The Salvation Army on a relief campaign to support the families impacted by the Wallow Fire. Starting today people can go into any Bashas', AJs or Food City location across the state and make a monetary donation to the Wallow Fire Relief Effort.

All of the money will go to The Salvation Army as they provide disaster relief services to our neighbors in eastern Arizona.

Currently the most urgent need is for financial donations to assist those who have been displaced by the fire.

Find a Bashas', AJs Fine Foods or Food City location near you.

For the most up to date information from the fire lines visit azfamily.com's special wildfire section.

[chumley]

I don't own property up there, but if I did, I'd be pretty unhappy with sugarcoating things with terms like "structures were compromised". It's not a secret to anybody what is going on, and people who are affected want to know the truth. What does "compromised" mean? Were six structures lost? Were six structures damaged, but saved?

Perhaps they are contacting the property owners directly with details, but if not, I'd be pissed. If my house just burned down, don't tell me it was compromised. Tell me it burned down. /rant/

edit: to be clear, this is not remotely aimed at trishness... this is a term that has been used by the fs and media.

[Trishness]

No worries......not taking it personally!

This is EXACTLY the word they used during the press conference and would not elaborate. Who knows if "compromised" means burnt to the ground or simply charred or "partially" burned. They seemed to skirt around a lot of issues, possibly because they just don't have the answers right now.

[joebartels]

Someone probably sued the government once for emotional damages when their house wasn't totaled. This is the way we live, lil' boy still pushin' big wheels.

[joebartels]

So I was just looking at the thumbnail of the map I posted above. Ironically, I'm seeing a resemblance to a Bear print. Might be time for me to turn off the computer?

The new fire line has created a hangnail http://hikearizona.com/map.php?QX=769

[azbackpackr]

Gee, maybe the Salvation Army will give me some soup.

Seriously, the evacuees, such as my husband (and I suppose, officially, myself) have no idea what is going on as far as getting any help. Most evacuees are not at the shelter. I would guess that a great many of them are in the Valley, Flagstaff, or other far-flung places, glued to TV and internet, with no idea if they can be reimbursed for the CONSIDERABLE EXPENSE of having to relocate suddenly. They may have bills due, but no job to earn money to pay them. There is no coordinated agency to help us that I have heard of. There is a phone number to call, but it's to ask about the fire.

My husband has a $100 paycheck from his part-time job, coming next week, and then a very small disability check, way under $1000, coming the beginning of July. And that is IT for him for the next 6 weeks. His job might not exist when he returns.

The population of Round Valley (Springerville-Eagar) is demographically on the elderly end of the scale. Although there are many families with kids at home, there really are a LOT of old people who live there. Most of them probably don't know how to find out information on the internet. Most of them are not well-off. They are not rich retirees who moved there, they are locals on Social Security. Where is the disaster relief? I have heard NOTHING about it. I do appreciate the Salvation Army, but how are they going to reach all of us? How do we find the disaster relief? I have seen nothing about it in the newspaper.

[RickVincent]

Looks like Reservation Lake is going to be the next victim. Sunrise Ski Park may be next to go up in flames within 3 miles.

Source: Modis

[BobP]

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... l#comments

[azbackpackr]

Looks like Reservation Lake is going to be the next victim. Sunrise Ski Park may be next to go up in flames within 3 miles.

Source: Modis

I noticed the Reservation Lake thing a couple days ago. The MODIS map program I just looked at is at least 2 days out of date. I found it here: http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/index.php

I wonder if there is a MODIS one that is updated more often? Seems like the inciweb map is better. Not the first map you see when you open it, but the one below that.

I am more interested in seeing if the fire crosses 260 in any significant way. Sure, you can see on the inciweb map where they did the burnout by Antelope Mtn. north of 260. That is ALL grass right through there. Sure makes sense for them to do a lot of burnouts in that grass country.

What I am interested to see is if the fire crosses 260 over by its junction with 373. I sure hope it doesn't. That is where Hidden Meadow Ranch is, where I work sometimes in the summers, and Green's Peak, etc.

Baldy kind of needs a burn. There are all those dead trees up there, due to pine bark beetle infestation about 10 years ago or so. However, I would not like to see it happen this year. We have had enough of fire.

[azbackpackr]

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... l#comments

I worked for Roxanne Knight at Reed's last year, front desk.

Over Memorial Day weekend we were driving along Big Lake Hwy 261 and saw Roxanne's son and cowboys driving that very herd up to their grazing lease.

Some of us love that country beyond reason. I guess I will drive up to see what happened to it, as soon as the roads are open again. I relate it kind of like going to the funeral home to see your loved one in an open casket...

[hippiepunkpirate]

Some of us love that country beyond reason. I guess I will drive up to see what happened to it, as soon as the roads are open again. I relate it kind of like going to the funeral home to see your loved one in an open casket...

Every time I drive 89 to or from anywhere, all I do is stare at the Schultz burn. It's pretty bad, but as time goes on reality sets in that "it happened, and there's nothing to undo it". Of course, the Schultz is no Wallow Fire. On the bright side, we may be gaining some great meadowland in the years to come when all the torched trees blow down and rot away!

[SkyIslander18]

Some of us love that country beyond reason. I guess I will drive up to see what happened to it, as soon as the roads are open again. I relate it kind of like going to the funeral home to see your loved one in an open casket...

Every time I drive 89 to or from anywhere, all I do is stare at the Schultz burn. It's pretty bad, but as time goes on reality sets in that "it happened, and there's nothing to undo it". Of course, the Schultz is no Wallow Fire. On the bright side, we may be gaining some great meadowland in the years to come when all the torched trees blow down and rot away!

It's been 7 years since the Gibson/Nuttall fire on Mt. Graham and it still bothers me to this day every time I drive up the mountain. The burn area has recovered a lot , but after seeing the before for most of my life, it's still hard for me to accept what happend. I feel just terrible for all the residents up north.

[cathymocha]

I read somewhere early this morning that the area size of the Wallow fire can be compared to combining New York City and Chicago...

[Dave1]

Wallow Fire: Wildlife also struggling to flee blaze
Rare species, newborn animals are among the creatures in fire's path

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... z1OqExuX4c


The fierce Wallow Fire sweeping through the White Mountains not only has humans on the move, but native and endangered wildlife that thrive in the thick forest habitat are fleeing for their lives.

Elk, deer, antelope, mountain lions, coyotes, birds and fish of many species as well as endangered or threatened animals including Mexican spotted owls, Mexican gray wolves and bald eagles have perished in the flames, said Chris Bagnoli of the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Other large, adult animals may be able to outrun the blaze.

Bagnoli, who lives in Eagar, said animals such as black bears, adult deer, antelope and elk could get ahead of the fire.

"But a female black bear with cubs will likely climb a tree to stay with them and that doesn't work well for survival," he said. "After the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, we found some female bears in trees that hadn't fled and had been burned."

Many other animals with cubs or pups will stay and die with their young, Bagnoli said.

Also unlikely to be able to outrun the fire are smaller animals such as ground squirrels, "that just can't outrun a wall of flame" and many thousands of fish that will suffocate in debris and sediment-choked streams and small lakes.

On Wednesday, animals could be seen moving away from the fire about 10 miles west of Eagar along AZ 260. At one point, hundreds of elk emerged from a smoky area on the edge of the fire, crowding into the large meadows that flank the highway. Deer also could be seen emerging from the smoke.

Of special concern to environmentalists are the Mexican gray wolf and bald eagle.

Mexican gray wolves were released in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests in 1998.

As of January, officials counted at least 50 wolves in the forest, said Sherry Barrett, Mexican Wolf Recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That number was up from 42 the previous year; the goal is 100.

Barrett said the wildlife service keeps track of the wolves through a weekly flyover of the area. Many of the wolves wear collars that send a signal to the plane while others have GPS collars that can be tracked through satellite. Since officials have been unable to do their flyovers because of the smoke, they don't yet know what has happened to the packs.

There are 10 packs in the national forest; four were probably unaffected and six are believed to have pups, Barrett said. One pack, called the Rim Pack, was in the Bear Wallow Creek Wilderness, the area where the fire started May 29.

"It burned very hot in that area," Barrett said. "But there is a possibility that the pack had made their den underground and the fire just went right over them."

She said that of particular concern are pups that were born in April and May and are not strong enough to escape the flames.

"Wolves will move pups to a safe area, but if a fire is coming too hot and fast, they will abandon them," she said.

Bagnoli said bald eagles and Mexican spotted owls also may have been affected by the fire.

"Bald eagles could be in for real difficulty depending on whether the nest tree burns," he said. "We have two eagles in the fire area, one at Luna Lake and the other at Crescent Lake, and they are nesting. We don't know if their area has been burned over."

Bagnoli said spotted owls rely on old-growth forest for their habitat and if that burns to the ground, their survival could be difficult.

"They are breeding too, and that is a problem," he said.

Bagnoli and Barrett said that if there was any good news out of the habitat destruction caused by the Wallow Fire, it was possible forest renewal.

"A fire results in a lot of greening up of an area," Barrett said. "That means more elk and deer production, which means more prey available for the wolves."

Cattle ranching and sheep herding are key industries in the White Mountains, and those operations have been scrambling to move their herds out of the way of the Wallow Fire.

Mark Pedersen and his shepherds are "sleeping with one eye open," he said, praying that the giant blaze doesn't come raging through their sheep-shearing camp in a huge meadow rimmed by pine trees about 10 miles from the western edge of the fire.

About seven weeks ago, Pedersen's shepherds began driving two groups of 2,000 sheep from the Sheep Springs Sheep Co. ranches in Chandler, past Apache Junction, across Blue Point Bridge on the Salt River and then across desert and foothills to the Mogollon Rim and, 220 miles later, into the high, cool grasslands of eastern Arizona.

They arrived just days ago at a shearing station - a group of corrals - about 7 miles west Greer, which was evacuated Monday.

Pedersen said on Wednesday he plans to stay at the shearing station with his sheep, but will move farther west if the fire approaches them. He can mobilize his sheep easily for the most part, he said.

"Drives like this have been going on from the Valley to this country for about 100 years," Pedersen said that as a bare sheep emerged from under the shearer's hands and trotted off to a corral. "Coming up here is a way of life."

Pedersen's wife, Candace, is the daughter of Dwayne Dobson, whose family started the company in 1929.

It's a way of life that has almost disappeared.

Fifty years ago, eight Valley outfits drove 12 bands of 2,000 sheep each to spend the summer feeding and breeding in the high country. Now the Dobson company is the only one hitting the trail called the Heber-Reno Sheep Trail Driveway, which was established in 1916.

Sheep herding has been an Arizona industry since the 1870s, and early on, it was discovered that the animals were happier in warmer areas such as the Valley in winter months and in cooler climes in the summer. So a tradition began of moving herds from the Valley in the spring up onto the Mogollon Rim or White Mountains pastures.

Shearers were buzzing the wool from the sheep at the rate of about one animal in five minutes, as Pedersen supervised. He kept raising his head to the horizon where huge plumes of gray smoke loomed over the landscape.

"If the fire gets Greer and keeps coming our way, then we drive northwest from here to grazing land about 10 miles away that we lease from the forest service," Pedersen said. "But if the fire stays away, then we bring in our other herd of 2,000 sheep I have holding up a ways from here. Then they'll all spend the summer grazing this area and breeding.

"In the meantime, we watch the fire closely and hope it leaves us alone."

Rancher Roxanne Knight, who runs Reed's Lodge, a motel in Springerville, with her husband, Galyn, said they didn't have enough time or workers to evacuate their roughly 300 cattle by the time they were advised to leave.

"We had just gotten up there with (the cattle) for the summer, and they were already tired, footsore and thirsty," Knight said. "If your horses and cowboys and trailers are close enough and you get an early start, it's possible . . . but when you have a herd that big, it's not an easy evacuation."

Knight said family members had been making the trip to provide water for the cattle each day until conditions prevented them from reaching the animals Wednesday.

"Even if they survive, they could be damaged by smoke inhalation, develop respiratory problems," she said.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... z1OqD9bKdz

[Sredfield]

Anyone ever seen a map of that stock driveway?

[Moovyoaz]

Anyone ever seen a map of that stock driveway?

This is a generic GPX route of the Heber-Reno Sheep Trail Driveway from Pumpkin Center to Showlow. I found it at a forgotton ATV website after reading an AzCentral article in 2/10 about the annual sheep drive spurred my interest, and saved it for a for a future off-road trip. Not my data, so use at your own risk.
http://hikearizona.com/map.php?GPS=10585

I hiked Escudilla on Sunday 5/29.. sad the area's burned, but glad I got to see it first. On the way home Sunday I took the northern route on Hwy 60 from Springerville to Showlow. The wind across the open plain was as strong as I can remember. Although I could barely hold the road, the on-coming bikers had it 10 times worse. I remember commenting to the lady with me that if a wildfire started, it's no telling how far it would run.

[azbackpackr]

Did you mean you hiked Escudilla on Sunday 5/29?? (You said 5/31). That is the day the fire started. My daughter and her boyfriend hiked to Big Lake Tower that day, and saw the two little fires in the far distance. The fire tower lady, Dahle, told them that one of the fires was a spot fire.

This is NEW information to me. I had thought there were two campfires left out of control, one in BWW, the other along a dirt road closer to Fish Creek. However, what Rose told me last night that Dahle told her, that the fire had only one source. The second fire was caused by an ember from the first fire. I am not sure where the original fire was? Was it nearer Bear Wallow or to the north, nearer Fish Creek? The name they gave it "Wallow" AND the wind direction tell me they were camped closer to BWW, maybe along FR 25??? Anyway, both fires quickly merged within a day. The rest is history...

[chumley]

Here's the Modis image from 3am this morning (6/10). Shows why they talk about being concerned about the Blue. Hopefully they can get some air support in there today since winds are supposed to pick up again tomorrow. Otherwise, the southwest corner onto the res looks like an issue still. Despite looking bad, it seems that the northwest corner is getting tons of resources. The meeting last night said that Sunrise has not seen any fires, and lines east of Greer are holding for now, but south of Greer is still a problem area and will be worked on today.

Two of the most promising points I read from the meeting last night:

-Reinarz addressed the issue of reports of large amounts of animals being burned. He reported there is very little truth to that. Crews have not reported seeing very much in the areas already burned. New Mexico has reported large numbers of elk moving in along their border with Arizona.

-Other good news is that there are still large areas of unburned trees and meadows that are still green.

[haggster]

Two of the most promising points I read from the meeting last night:

-Reinarz addressed the issue of reports of large amounts of animals being burned. He reported there is very little truth to that. Crews have not reported seeing very much in the areas already burned. New Mexico has reported large numbers of elk moving in along their border with Arizona.

Last night, I did hear Reinarz commenting about the rumors of animals dying and he mentioned that the animals know how to get out of the way of the fire. He hasn't heard any reports of deer and elk being killed.

Also, Big Lake photos that were posted on another forum, http://www.flickr.com/photos/63872389@N04/. They were taken yesterday.