CASPER
New member
Forest fire crews held the line on Sunday against a monster blaze in eastern Arizona despite another day of high winds and low humidity, allowing thousands of evacuees to return home and securing a New Mexico border town.
The so-called Wallow Fire displaced as many as 10,000 people at its peak and has scorched more than 680 square miles of Arizona's White Mountains, a mostly pine-studded region popular as a weekend getaway for families seeking to escape the summer heat.
Much of the firefighting effort on the 15th day of the blaze focused on keeping flames from encroaching on Luna, New Mexico, a village of about 200 people at the edge of the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest near the fire's easternmost flank.
"This is without a doubt the biggest fire I've been on, by a longshot," said firefighter Rod Schultz, part of a crew from Utah who has worked for three days helping clear a buffer zone of tinder-dry brush and trees between the fire line and Luna.
Staring out across a wide canyon to a steep, smoldering hillside that had been engulfed in flames hours earlier, Schultz said, "It ripped pretty good last night."
A short distance away, Todd Etsate, a member of the Zuni-Pueblo "Hotshots" team laboring on the same fire break, said of the advancing blaze, "It'll come, but this will slow it down."
Evacuation orders were lifted Sunday for the 7,000 to 8,000 residents forced to flee last week from two eastern Arizona towns, Springerville and Eager, as authorities determined the fire no longer posed an immediate danger to them.
But returning evacuees were warned that lingering smoke and soot in the air posed risks for children and people with health problems.
Some 1,900 Arizona additional residents from elsewhere across the fire zone remained displaced, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Suzanne Flory said.
Fire officials in New Mexico told Reuters that an estimated 3,900 structures -- homes and nonresidential buildings combined -- were still under a fire threat.
With some 4,300 personnel assigned to ground crews battling the blaze, about half were on the New Mexico side of the border, laboring to clear fire breaks around Luna and other populated areas.
As of Sunday the blaze, believed to have started from an unattended campfire, had crept to within a mile of the New Mexico border but had yet to cross the line. Fire officials said earlier reports of it entering New Mexico stemmed from confusion over controlled burns conducted in recent days to remove scrub and trees as potential fuel for advancing flames.
The so-called Wallow Fire displaced as many as 10,000 people at its peak and has scorched more than 680 square miles of Arizona's White Mountains, a mostly pine-studded region popular as a weekend getaway for families seeking to escape the summer heat.
Much of the firefighting effort on the 15th day of the blaze focused on keeping flames from encroaching on Luna, New Mexico, a village of about 200 people at the edge of the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest near the fire's easternmost flank.
"This is without a doubt the biggest fire I've been on, by a longshot," said firefighter Rod Schultz, part of a crew from Utah who has worked for three days helping clear a buffer zone of tinder-dry brush and trees between the fire line and Luna.
Staring out across a wide canyon to a steep, smoldering hillside that had been engulfed in flames hours earlier, Schultz said, "It ripped pretty good last night."
A short distance away, Todd Etsate, a member of the Zuni-Pueblo "Hotshots" team laboring on the same fire break, said of the advancing blaze, "It'll come, but this will slow it down."
Evacuation orders were lifted Sunday for the 7,000 to 8,000 residents forced to flee last week from two eastern Arizona towns, Springerville and Eager, as authorities determined the fire no longer posed an immediate danger to them.
But returning evacuees were warned that lingering smoke and soot in the air posed risks for children and people with health problems.
Some 1,900 Arizona additional residents from elsewhere across the fire zone remained displaced, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Suzanne Flory said.
Fire officials in New Mexico told Reuters that an estimated 3,900 structures -- homes and nonresidential buildings combined -- were still under a fire threat.
With some 4,300 personnel assigned to ground crews battling the blaze, about half were on the New Mexico side of the border, laboring to clear fire breaks around Luna and other populated areas.
As of Sunday the blaze, believed to have started from an unattended campfire, had crept to within a mile of the New Mexico border but had yet to cross the line. Fire officials said earlier reports of it entering New Mexico stemmed from confusion over controlled burns conducted in recent days to remove scrub and trees as potential fuel for advancing flames.