Mountaintop Wildfire Roars Out of Control

After destroying at least 250 homes and cabins and blackening more than 5,000 acres, the year’s first big Western wildfire was pronounced totally uncontained Friday and officials said it could end up burning tens of thousands of acres.

Fire officials said the wind-whipped fire on Mt. Lemmon northeast of the city could last at least two more weeks. Larry Humphrey, the Bureau of Land Management official in charge of battling the blaze, said it leveled at least half the homes and businesses in the hamlet of Summerhaven in less than 90 minutes Thursday night.

Winds topping 60 mph fanned the fire. Thirty miles away in Tucson, the mountain looked as if it had erupted, with massive coils of thick gray smoke pouring out near its peak.

On Thursday night, some residents near Mt. Lemmon’s base set up chairs in their yards and somberly watched one fiery burst after another as homes and the propane tanks that fueled them went up in smoke.

The Red Cross secured a resort hotel about 50 miles away as a shelter for dozens of Mt. Lemmon residents burned out of their homes. There, Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup offered hugs and condolences to some who had seen televised footage of their homes burning and others who did not yet know whether theirs still stood.

“There’s a million people here in Tucson who are so saddened by this,” Walkup said.

“My wife and I know all the trails. We rent a cabin up there two or three times a year,” he added.

About 100 people lived in Summerhaven year-round, while others came in the summer to cool off or in the winter to enjoy the snow at the Mt. Lemmon ski area.

Lea Patterson was one of the year-rounders, a waitress at the Mt. Lemmon Cafe, known throughout the region for its pies.

After the evacuation was sounded, she grabbed family pictures and videos of her grandchildren. Patterson learned from a friend helping firefighters that her house was destroyed. Almost everything is gone, she said, as she chatted with a couple of other evacuees outside her hotel room.

“It’s just stuff, though,” she added. “It will be harder not being around the people. This was a tight-knit place -- a place where when you’re sick everyone knows it, and someone brings over a pot of soup and some crackers. It was a place where you really knew your neighbors.”

On Friday, some of Summerhaven’s residents were kept up-to-date about which homes were gone and which remained by friends on the fire line.

Officials said they didn’t know when conditions would be safe enough to allow residents back up the mountain.

Jason Schwechter, a 23-year-old aspiring photographer, stared up from the hotel patio Friday at the billowing smoke. Thursday night, he had watched on TV as the home he rented was consumed by flames.

“Every 10 minutes,” he said. “There it was.”

Much of his work was destroyed, he said. He couldn’t make it from his time-share sales job in Tucson back to his house before firefighters closed the only road up the mountain. He said some cash and some irreplaceable objects -- a camera that belonged to his grandfather -- also are gone.

For Tucson Police Officer Kent Ryan, the losses couldn’t be neatly listed.

“Just a lot of memories,” he said.

About 35 years ago, Ryan’s parents spent $7,500 -- “just about everything they had,” he said -- on a two-bedroom cottage and the lot next to it.

“Now they’re devastated,” Ryan said.

Since they bought it, it was the scene for decades’ worth of family Christmases and July 4th celebrations. When he was in college, Ryan would hunker down in the secluded spot to study.

In July, he and his wife, Gabriella, would roll out sleeping bags on the porch and look up at the stars. Last February they took their 2-year-old to the cabin for her first taste of snow.

“She was in hog heaven,” Gabriella Ryan said. “We’re so glad we took pictures.”

The cause of the fire, which started Tuesday, is unknown. Investigators were turned back this week by its intense heat. But all too evident was the thick brush near the hamlet of Summerhaven that had not burned in perhaps a century, according to fire officials. That, and the searing wind, provided a laboratory for disaster, they said.

“The abominable wind,” said Walkup, Tucson’s mayor. “It was no ordinary thing. It was as if someone had conjured it up and blown it across the desert.”

More than 1,000 firefighters are expected on the scene in several days. The BLM’s Humphrey said his crews are doing what they can, but planes with fire retardant have been grounded for long stretches by smoke and high winds.

“How long will I be here?” he asked, responding to a question at a news conference. “Just tell me when the next rain will be.”

On Friday, Mt. Lemmon was a landscape riddled with unknowns. Why some houses were destroyed and others nearby survived was a mystery. Whether the fire would circle back and consume areas it had skipped -- like the ski lodge -- also was up in the air.

Humphrey said the fire, officially called the Aspen fire, fit a worst-case scenario he and his colleagues had sketched out earlier.

“We had predicted that if we had a fire in the area we would pretty much lose Summerhaven,” he said. “Unfortunately, our prediction was pretty good.”

Last year, prolonged drought turned Western forests tinder-dry. Arizona alone lost 467 homes and more than 630,000 acres to flame. More than 900,000 acres burned in Colorado.