April 09 Fire in Pine Valley

First Fire of the 2009 Fire Season

This fire was reportedly started as a campfire by an equestrian who fell asleep next to it and awoke Monday morning with a raging inferno next to him. He headed for Pine to report it and met some of PSFD firefighters trekking up the trail to work the blaze which had already been reported.

You can also see some excellent photos by Dennis Howe on his site;

http://www.dennishowe.com/photographs/dsfire.html

For a comparison look at the following picture. It was taken in the fall of 2004 after the bark beetle decimation. the reality is that the fire last Monday would have been much harder to fight if the forest looked like this now. The firebreak around the community has made us much more defensible, and the natural thinning of the forest by the beetles has removed much of the fuel.

The US Forest Service had representatives at the Pine Post Office on Tuesday 4-28, with information for any who wanted it. You can read their incident reports here.

The following photos were taken by several people; those other than my own will have their name credit underneath each photo.

The good news is that it is now mostly contained although it did burn right up the rim side to the top and over into Coconino National Forest. It never did threaten any homes in Pine Valley due mostly to the location and prevailing winds.

Let's hope that this sort of situation does not repeat itself. This would have been a different story if the man had been camping on the south or west side of Pine or Strawberry.