SAFFORD - An influx of moisture later this week may prevent the Nuttall and Gibson fires from merging atop Mount Graham, but three telescopes and dozens of cabins "are still threatened and will be for quite some time," the incident's commander said Monday night.
The next few days were shaping up as pivotal for the Nuttall Complex, which grew to 16,360 acres and was 10 percent contained, meaning one-tenth of its perimeter wasn't at risk of expanding.
Dan Oltrogge, the man leading a force of 837 personnel, told about 75 cabin owners and local residents that his team had spent $1 million in the previous 24 hours and was making progress blazing a fuel break along the spine of the Pinaleno Mountains.
He cautioned the crowd that if flames impinge on structures, he'll probably have to pull firefighters out and let the buildings fend for themselves.
"We could lose some of those structures," he said.
Winds traveling upslope started numerous fires on the wrong side of Arizona 366, also known as the Swift Trail, but crews were able to suppress them.
"It didn't give us a whole lot of problems today, but we're a long way from being done," he said. "The weather is going to put the fires out, so you're going to see smoke on that mountain for a long time."
Flames remain about three-quarters of a mile from the telescopes and several miles from the cabins, government buildings and communications equipment at Columbine, Turkey Flat and Heliograph Peak.
Firefighters continue to clear trees and brush along the Swift Trail in advance of burning out the area so the main fire is deprived of fuel when it arrives.
Amid the whine of chain saws, sawyers cried, "Logs coming down!" right before the trees creaked and landed with a thud. Just over the ridge, the same firefighters with the Carson hotshot crew had cut fuel breaks with hand tools over the weekend.
"It was steep and rugged, but we've got a strong crew and they pushed through real well," firefighter Steven Miranda said.
As has been the case throughout the fire, Miranda's crew was forced to work far from the flames, rather than attack them directly.
"We're going real indirect on this thing because of the terrain and fire behavior," he said.
Firefighters won't even try to stop the fire from burning across the Pinalenos' north-facing slopes because they say the area is too dangerous for a ground-based assault.
Instead, they're using the crest of the Pinalenos, which runs some 20 miles from northwest to southeast and juts up nearly 7,000 feet from the desert floor.
"That's just the safest location to put firefighters and it's our highest probability of success," said deputy incident commander Paul Summerfelt.
At Monday night's meeting, Walt Friauf, the fire management officer for the Pinalenos from 1972 to 1989, questioned why crews hadn't pounced on the Gibson Fire, which began June 22 and stayed small for 10 days.
"We had numerous fires in the exact same spot. We put people right in there every time and got it out," he said.
Rich Kvale, aviation officer for the Coronado National Forest and a former Safford district ranger, said hiking crews in or having them rappel from helicopters was no longer safe because of extreme fire behavior caused by drought.
"The choice was made to use heli-tankers on it day after day," he said.
As the Gibson Fire churned nearby, hotshots thinned vegetation around a half-dozen communications towers atop 10,022-foot Heliograph Peak.
The peak, first used by the U.S. Army in 1886 to flash mirror signals as Morse code to alert soldiers to the movement of Apaches, offered a commanding view of the Nuttall Complex. The humidity dropped, pines torched like matchsticks and a dirty plume of smoke soared into the sky.
At eye level, two P-3 Orion air tankers bore down on the fire's eastern flanks and showered several thousand gallons of retardant as red as oxygenated blood. The planes were just brought into service after the nation's entire civilian fleet of 33 heavy air tankers was grounded in May due to safety concerns. They were reassigned later in the day to new fires in New Mexico's Gila National Forest.
Firefighters worked on a historic cabin built in 1933 by the Civilian Conservation Corps to support the peak's 99-foot steel fire tower. They covered it with a silvery material similar to aluminum foil and the tentlike fire shelters in their backpacks, hoping to deflect radiant heat and insulate the building against a shower of burning embers.
In nearby Turkey Flat, site of 75 to 100 cabins, flames are about 2.5 miles to the northwest.
"We think we have a week or so until the fire is at the Turkey Flat area," said Pruett Small, the fire's operations section chief.
Tucsonan Sheri Brown had two hours Monday morning to gather her belongings from a cabin at Turkey Flat that her family rebuilt 15 years ago. A mile-long line of cars was waiting to ascend the mountain shortly after dawn, she said.
"For the real keepsakes, the stuff you really want to save for memories, that gave us enough time to get those out," she said.
Brown, a teacher at Tanque Verde Elementary School, said she was heartened to see blue flagging on her cabin, meaning that firefighters determined "ours is savable" when they did pre-emptive triage on the community.
Safford resident Shenoa Greywolf was more concerned about damage to a mountain sacred to many Indians.
"Every time I see the fire, I cry," she said. "It's part of our heritage and how we live."
It appears the Nuttall Complex hasn't burned as severely as the 30,563-Bullock Fire and 84,750-acre Aspen Fire, which charred the nearby Santa Catalinas in 2002 and 2003, said Randall Smith, natural resources staff officer for the Coronado.
"If this strategy is successful, I think the fire in the long run will be beneficial to the mountain. Those northern slopes have had a lot of buildup. This will allow us to return fire to a more natural role in that ecosystem," he said.
Still, Smith cautioned that "this thing still has a lot of potential to be an extremely catastrophic fire, and the next couple of days will be critical."
Already, Forest Service officials are planning for rehabilitation work on the mountain. They'll first map which areas burned most severely using aerial and satellite photos, then probably apply mulch and grass seed in an attempt to restore ground cover and prevent soil erosion and runoff.
The Coronado has already discussed the flooding threat with officials from Graham County and the town of Pima, which sits downstream of the burned areas, Smith said.
StarNet slide show
Updated on-the-scene photos, aerial pictures and satellite images from the Nuttall and Gibson fires.
Nuttall Complex
Size: 16,360 acres
Containment: 10 percent
Cause: lightning
Cost: $4.2 million
NUTTALL FIRE
7,810 acres, started June 26
GIBSON FIRE
8,550 acres, started June 22
