Some residents return as Tenderfoot Fire moves away from Yarnell

YARNELL — As the Tenderfoot Fire continued to move away from Yarnell, residents living west of State Route 89 got to return to their homes when the highway was reopened Friday afternoon.

They trickled in, restoring life to this part of the community. All of the restaurants and stores on the west side of town, except the hardware store, have been closed since Wednesday due to lack of power and people to run them.

Anita Kristensen, who lives on the west side of the highway, where officials say evacuation was voluntary, said she was told she had to leave Wednesday evening. The fire had been close — she watched as it rolled over a nearby hill, overtaking it in 15 minutes.

“It wasn’t more scary; I think we were more ready” than in 2013, she said. “We knew exactly what we need to do so we can go quickly."

Kristensen lived in the mountainside hamlet during the devastating Yarnell Hill Fire, which killed 19 firefighters and destroyed more than 100 homes west of SR 89 three years ago this month. This time around, Kristensen knew what to do: She grabbed clothes, bins of paperwork and her dog, Amigo, in half an hour.

Residents without transportation were bused to a Red Cross shelter in Prescott. After spending a night at the evacuation center at Yavapai College, Kristensen stayed with friends in Skull Valley.

“Everything was very well organized and everybody was very helpful," she said. "Yarnell is really close knit. ... We have very good communication in Yarnell, looking after each other, helping each other."

The Tenderfoot Fire is burning to the east of SR 89, where evacuation orders for parts of Yarnell and Peeples Valley to the north remained in place Saturday. Officials said they would re-evaluate Saturday morning whether they can safely allow residents to return home.

Meanwhile Friday, firefighters struggled to gain control of the blaze, which was estimated to have consumed4,040 acres and three outbuildings. By midday, the number of firefighters deployed had increased to 400 from 250.

"There are very limited opportunities to get our folks in safely" now that the fire is moving into rugged land, Incident Commander Alan Sinclair said.

As firefighters work, "they have to ensure that they can safely get people out of a bad situation," Sinclair said. "And in rugged terrain, that's very hard to do."

The fire has moved away from Yarnell in a northeasterly direction. SInclair said fire managers will be looking for opportunities to the northeast of the current fire area, where firefighters can safely engage and suppress the flames south of Wagoner Road, which skims along the southwestern edge of Prescott National Forest.

"They're taking time — and we have time," Sinclair said. "There's no immediate threat to structures."

Why some residents stayed behind

Ray Collins, a Vietnam veteran who lives on the west side of Yarnell, said he and most of his neighbors stayed put since they were told the evacuation wasn’t mandatory.

“I didn’t think there was any danger in it because I didn’t think it would ever cross the highway,” Collins said. He watched the flames burning on ridge lines from his vine-covered front porch.

“It was a pretty good size fire, but not as big as the other one three years ago, and it didn’t move as fast as three years ago,” he said.

“The planes were working real hard trying to get it under control. The fire department was working their butt off to get it under control, and I think they did a good job.”

He’s lived there since 2004, and during the Yarnell Hill Fire, embers burned two patches of his roof. Although this fire was smaller, it still hurts the area, he said.

“People say, ‘It didn’t bother anything except just the mountain,’ but it did bother all the wildlife. They’ll be gone for a long time. Back here, they were just starting to come back.”

He had started seeing deer and javelina, but now thinks it will be years before animals return.

“It affects them as much as it does the people,” he said. “Even though the fire didn’t come over here on the west side of town, it still affects everybody’s life.”

The role of weather

Although fire crews had expected winds Friday, what ended up happening was "not to the extent they were talking about," said Dean McAlister, a fire management spokesman.

"Nothing had that big of an effect on the fire. If anything, it kind of moderated it because it was partly cloudy and humidity is up," he said Friday evening.

As for Saturday, "the weather is supposed to be more in our favor because they’re talking about the possibility of showers the next couple days and cooler temperatures. That really aids the firefighters."

Topography and weather have been key differences between the Tenderfoot and Yarnell Hill blazes, fire official Mike 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.

Dolores Garcia, a federal Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman, said the Tenderfoot Fire sparked Wednesday less than a mile southeast of Yarnell. It burned through a chaparral area that was not consumed during the fatal blaze of 2013.

By the first night, the Tenderfoot 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.

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

The last measurable rainfall in the area was 0.04 inches May 17 in Prescott and “traces” of rain May 18. The highest temperature was 69 degrees both days. National Weather Service meteorologist Hector Vasquez said the area has seen higher 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.”

The Yarnell Hill Fire

Yarnell was the scene of one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. 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.

Hundreds of people fled 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.”

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