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'Everything Is Just a Nightmare'
Forced to Flee Western Wildfires, Thousands Uncertain and Afraid
Residents of Durango, Colo., watch the fire burning at Missionary Ridge. The blaze has burned more than 63,000 acres. (Charlie Riedel - AP)
• Western Fires: Eighteen large wildfires burned across six states yesterday.
_____Special Report_____
• Wildfires
By Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 25, 2002; Page A01
GLOBE, Ariz., June 24 -- Jackie Nelson wheeled her pickup truck off a highway and into the dusty parking lot of a makeshift shelter here this morning, looking for baby food for her 7-month-old granddaughter. She had fled her mountain home with little time to pack and hardly had any idea where she was headed.
"I'll take anything you can find," she told a volunteer rummaging through boxes of donated supplies. "We could be living like this for a while. We don't know how long we'll be gone, or whether we'll have anything to go home to."
That lament resounded across the West today, as 18 large blazes burned in six states, consuming acreage at a pace roughly double the 10-year average. Since spring, more than 2 million acres have been charred. Wildfires have been part of the West's seasonal cycle for millennia, but in recent years drought and fuel-filled forests have led to bigger fires, and more people have moved close to the woods. This year's fires have created their own diaspora.
As thousands of residents remained on the run today, weary and tense, dragging pets, strollers and photo albums, they had no choice but to rely on the kindness of strangers as authorities rushed to meet their needs for shelter, food and supplies.
Here in the dense pine forests of eastern Arizona, about 30,000 residents had abandoned nine threatened or torched towns and scattered to hastily opened refugee centers as far as 150 miles away. Few know whether their houses have been spared or consumed by the huge blazes, because once they left there was no turning back.
Several thousand residents in Colorado also have been forced from their homes because of wildfires, and some of them have been living out of their cars or sleeping on the floors of high school gymnasiums for nearly two weeks. Wildfires in Colorado this month have destroyed nearly 200 homes, and on Sunday night, fire officials in the state ordered hundreds more people to evacuate because they were having a new struggle with one stubborn blaze in the southwestern part of the state.
Large fires also were burning in New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming.
In Arizona, fire officials said for the first time that favorable weather might soon allow them to start taming the Chedeski and Rodeo fires, side-by-side blazes that in the past few days have swept across 300,000 acres. But that was only a small sign of hope.
The fires, still strong and unpredictable, have destroyed more than 300 homes and are likely to burn more, officials said.
Lisa Gentry, a single mother, checked into a motel in this tiny town Sunday night after authorities ordered her to abandon her home in Lakeside, Ariz., because of the approaching fires. They rang her doorbell repeatedly at 1 a.m. Sunday and urged her to leave right away, but she refused.
"I needed a little time," she said. "You think, 'What do I grab?' It's not easy. I keep remembering things I would have liked to take with us."
Before she fled, Gentry ran around her house, taking photos of her furniture, her computer, even items stocked in her kitchen cabinets. She stuffed her trunk with photo albums, tossed an ice chest in the back seat of her Saturn and took off with her 8-year-old son and her dog.
They rushed down winding mountain roads choked with smoke and sprinkled with ash. Today, as she lugged belongings out of her motel room and back into her car, she said she did not know her next stop.
"I guess I could try to stay with family in Phoenix, but I don't know what we would do with the dog," she said. "And I don't know how long this will last. I already wish I had brought a few more things with me. Maybe I'll need more checks for my checkbook. Maybe I should have tried to fit my computer."
Nearby, inside a community hall that had been converted into a shelter, Jim Richards stood amid piles of blankets and crates of water bottles debating his next move. He, too, lacked answers. For 10 years, he has lived in the mountain towns now besieged by the fires. This was his second stop since he and his wife and baby boy had evacuated. At another shelter Sunday, he listened as a U.S. Forest Service official warned an anxious crowd that fire could wipe out all of their homes.
"Everyone just gasped, and I nearly fell over," Richards said. "Everything right now is just a nightmare."
Martias Armenta, who works as a school custodian in one of the evacuated towns, had found some solace in his flight. At first, he, his wife and two grandsons had stayed in a motel near here. Then, to save what little money they had, they came to the shelter and met a volunteer who offered them a free place to stay for as long as they needed it. "I don't know what we would have done without that," he said. "We left without anything."
It could be days, or even weeks, before any of them returns.
Residents of the area's most populated town, Show Low, were relieved today to hear authorities say that the wildfire was approaching with less fury. Light winds today and Sunday have slowed the advance of the blaze and given a growing army of firefighters time to attack it and to defend homes. Fire officials said they had saved at least 1,000 houses in the area from the blaze and no longer expected Show Low to be consumed by a "wall of flames."
"We're beginning to get the upper hand," said Jim Paxon, a Forest Service official. Still, he stressed that the fire remained a serious threat because the weather was uncertain.
Officials said the fire could spread to more than a half-million acres and burn across bone-dry pine forests for several more weeks. Today, fire crews fought the blaze from the air and on the ground, using a fleet of bulldozers to reinforce fire breaks. The wildfire had been two blazes until late Sunday, when it morphed into one. Both were ignited, apparently by people, last week. Officials said one blaze began when a lost hiker lit a small fire to signal for help.
Despite the widespread property damage, no deaths or serious injuries have been reported in Arizona. That had been the case in Colorado, too, until today, when authorities attributed the recent death of a 50-year-old woman to an asthma attack brought on by smoke from the largest wildfire in the state's history. That determination opened the possibility that Forest Service employee Terry Lynn Barton, who has been accused of starting the 137,000-acre blaze, could face additional charges.
Only a few hundred residents in the path of the Arizona wildfire were ignoring orders to leave. Some of them were standing on their rooftops, watching it creep ever closer.
"It's desolate back there," said Jackie Nelson, who had come to the shelter in Globe in search of baby food. "We were one of the last families to leave."
Volunteers quickly found a package of diapers for her. But there was no baby food among the supplies. A nurse rushed off to try to find it in town.
"I'll wait," Nelson said. "That's all we're doing, waiting."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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