BREAKING

Official: 5,000-acre Tenderfoot Fire near Yarnell is human-caused

Ricardo Cano, and Ron Dungan
The Republic | azcentral.com
Winds fanned the Tenderfoot Fire on June 9, 2016, forcing more evacuations in the Yarnell area.

The Tenderfoot Fire’s intensified burn Thursday afternoon gave officials some concern — and dashed any hopes from frustrated evacuees that some of them would be able to return home as anticipated earlier in the day.

Residents in the Yarnell area were again put on alert Thursday when residents of 30 more homes near the Peeples Valley area were forced to flee after strong winds caused increased activity on the north side of the fire.

Fire officials had been optimistic overnight and into the morning about the progress and containment made on the Tenderfoot Fire, which sparked Wednesday afternoon between slopes southeast of Yarnell and had been burning away from the community. Dolores Garcia, a federal Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman, said lightning has been ruled out as the cause of the blaze, but exactly who started it and how is not yet known.

Officials said the blaze had burned an estimated 1,300 acres by late Thursday afternoon and was 10 percent contained, but aerial mapping after nightfall showed the blaze had gained considerable ground, having scorched 5,000 acres.

Garcia said the fire's growth prompted no heightened concern: it's treading north and following ridge lines, up and away from development.

Authorities initially planned on deciding Thursday evening whether to reopen State Route 89 and allow some of the more than 280 displaced residents on the west side of Yarnell — where houses are least threatened by the blaze — to return home.

But fire officials reversed course late in the afternoon.

Location of Tenderfoot Fire.

For one, the majority of homes in the area were still without water and electricity as the 5 p.m. decision deadline loomed. The fire damaged several electricity poles.

Additionally, the BLM reported at about 2:15 p.m. that winds had fanned the flames of the fire to where additional resources had to be called. There were concerns that the blaze would cross State Route 89, leaving vulnerable the west side of Yarnell, most of which was devastated by the Yarnell Hill Fire that took the lives of 19 firefighters three years ago this month.

That didn't happen, and fire activity subsided as evening approached, just as it had Wednesday. This is typical of wildfire behavior, experts say. Fire is most likely to grow at the heat of the day, when vegetation is at its driest and windy conditions all too easily propel the flames.

Garcia said Thursday evening that the fire posed “no eminent threat” to homes or structures and had not crossed any containment lines.

She stressed that fire officials were being more cautious than concerned in not opening the roads and letting people return. She wouldn't say whether residents should expect to be allowed back in even just to get necessities. If that happens, she said, it would most likely be for folks on the west side of town only.

"The last thing we want to do is have residents go back into unsafe situations," she said.

Garcia said fire crews expected Thursday's conditions of strong winds and dry heat. The forecast called for wind gusts of 20 to 25 mph.

Friday is expected to be wetter, with a possibility of “some isolated showers in the area,” said Robert Rickey, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Flagstaff. Breezy southwest winds, with 20 to 25 mph gusts, should continue.

“Then it goes back to dry weather on Sunday,” Rickey said.

Anxiously waiting to go home

Arizona Department of Public Safety Sgt. Angelo Trujillo directs a driver that he has to turn around at a roadblock on State Route 89 at Hayes Ranch Road in Peeples Valley, Thursday morning, June 9, 2016.  Firefighters were trying to put out the Tenderfoot Fire near Yarnell.

Several residents who were evacuated from their homes Wednesday evening were anxiously waiting at a gas-station parking lot next to the SR 89 closure to see when they would be let back into town.

Many were under the belief they would be able to go back into Yarnell on Thursday.

Peggy Starcher, a Yarnell resident whose home was hundreds of feet from the blaze, was told by a Yavapai County sheriff’s deputy she had to leave because the fire was burning too close.

Starcher didn’t have time to gather much — about five minutes. She took her two dogs, but her cats stayed behind.

She said she left the front door of her home open, with the hopes that her cats would be able to escape if the fire damaged her house.

Starcher and several other displaced residents did not go to the Yavapai College center in Prescott, about 30 miles away, where volunteers had set up a shelter for evacuees.

Instead, many of them spent the night in their cars in the parking lot of the Mountainaire Gas Station.

The gas station, like most homes in the area, lost power during the fire, though it stayed open throughout the night to accommodate displaced residents and fire personnel.

“It’s always been peaceful and quiet here,” Starcher said, “until this.”

Several residents and passers-by drove up to the roadblock set up next to the gas station Thursday morning, wondering when the roads through town would reopen.

Each time, officials turned them back.

About 10 a.m. Thursday, Starcher sat in her car parked underneath some shade — waiting.

RELATED: Social media share heartfelt reactions about Tenderfoot Fire

The blaze

Flames from the Tenderfoot Fire dot the side of a hill overlooking Peeples Valley, Thursday, June 9, 2016.

Firefighters battled flames as high as 15 feet Wednesday, according to fire official Mike Reichling.

Topography and weather have been key differences between Tenderfoot and the 2013 Yarnell Hill blaze, Reichling said. In 2013, the fire was sparked in more open terrain on the opposite end of town — and winds blew the fire in a “U-turn” back toward homes and structures, Reichling said.

On Wednesday, local fire agencies, along with the federal Bureau of Land Management, responded to the fire, with about 80 firefighters on the scene. By midday Thursday, that number had grown to about 240 firefighters on the scene.

Garcia said the fire sparked less than a mile southeast of Yarnell and had moved rapidly. She said it had been pushed by winds up to 15 mph, and was burning through a chaparral area that was not consumed during the fatal blaze of 2013.

The fire has burned three structures — all out buildings — and appeared to move northeast, burning upslope just east and away from the community, on the opposite side of SR 89. A photo showed flames moving up Y Mountain, just beyond a monument honoring the firefighters who died in 2013.

By nightfall, the fire had reached the top of the ridge, destroying cell towers there, said Dwight D'Evelyn, a Yavapai County Sheriff's Office spokesman.

Garcia said crews were attacking the fire from the air and the ground. That included firefighters from Yarnell, Congress, Peeples Valley, the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service. Four elite "type-1" wildland fire crews had been dispatched by Thursday afternoon.

Garcia said conditions in central Arizona are extremely dry with a high fire danger.

The last measurable rainfall in the area was in Prescott at .04 inches on May 17, and “traces” of rain on May 18. The highest temperature was 69 degrees both days. National Weather Service meteorologist Hector Vasquez said the area has seen warmer temperatures since then and high winds in the afternoon, drying up plants into the summer.

“The vegetation has gotten dryer,” Vasquez said. “That’s why it’s fire season. Everything is bone dry. Any moisture that fell in the spring is gone by now until the July monsoon season.”

RELATED:  'Granite Mountain' movie version of Yarnell firefighters' story to begin production

The Yarnell Hill Fire

Yarnell was the scene of one of the deadliest wildfires in history.

On June 28, 2013, a lightning storm ignited the Yarnell Hill Fire in the high desert northwest of Phoenix. Two days later, the brush fire that covered a few hundred acres exploded across 13 square miles.

'We had 3 minutes to save their lives'

Hundreds of people fled from Yarnell, Glen Ilah and Peeples Valley as flames destroyed 127 homes.

The Granite Mountain Hotshots, who had been hand-cutting firebreaks along the blaze's flank, descended from a mountain ridge into a bowl where they became trapped. The 19 men deployed protective shelters, but all were overcome by a wall of fire so hot it fractured boulders.

Memorials for the fallen firefighters played out for months, and questions about what went wrong that day have lingered.

Several firefighters who had battled the 2013 blaze responded to the Tenderfoot fire, Reichling said.

“There are a number of us that were on that incident three years ago. Driving in and seeing some of the firefighters, it was a very emotional situation,” Reichling said. “But rest assured, this time we learned from the incident three years ago, and all the prep work the Yarnell Fire Department did really helped us out.”

Chuck Overmyer watched the latest fire burn from his home in Glen Ilah, a subdivision across the highway from Yarnell that was devastated by the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire.

Overmyer and his wife, Nina Bill, lost their home and nearly all of their possessions in that blaze and had to rebuild.

“It’s horrible,” he said Wednesday evening in a telephone interview as he watched a helicopter drop water on the blaze and juggled a steady stream of calls to his cellphone.

He said he has no plans to evacuate and didn’t feel in danger at the moment.

“If it comes this way, I’m going to grab the garden hose. I’m going down with the house this time.”