Crews gain a bit on Museum Fire
Firefighters report 12% containment
The soil within the perimeter lines of the Museum Fire is blackened and charred.
It stands out among the singed Ponderosa Pines and the lingering smoke still smoldering from small piles on the forest floor.
The Museum Fire ripped through nearly 2,000 acres barely a mile outside Flagstaff in just five days.
Houses just down the street from the perimeter were evacuated as the wildfire approached Monday. Residents were allowed to return to their homes on Wednesday, seemingly signaling that the fire was under control after a Type-1 Incident Management team worked around the clock both from the air and on the ground.
“We’re cautiously optimistic at this point,” public information officer Joe Zwierz
chowski told The Arizona Republic during a media tour of a small section of the burned area.
No structures have burned, and no one has been injured. In some areas, grasses could begin to sprout within a few weeks and new trees by spring.
Fire crews have already established a perimeter to protect parts of Flagstaff proper, the city’s and county’s watershed, nearby homes, and power and water lines.
The fire is 12% contained as of Thursday afternoon, and a Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team has been called to start the second stage, which involves assessing the damage caused by the fire, identifying any potential threats and recommending how to best mitigate them.
But it’s still not over.
A tour of burned areas
The media tour The Republic was taken on was limited to a lower portion of Mount Elden Lookout Road. The trees were a mosaic of burnt blackened pines right next to lush green ones.
Multiple officials said it was one of the lesser damaged areas, though. The tour was limited due to difficult roads and fire suppression efforts still underway.
Other areas were significantly more damaged, officials told The Republic. The forest canopy has been consumed in some spots, leaving the trees looking more like used matchsticks than the Ponderosa-dense forest it once was.
Fire continues to burn
The fire is still actively burning. It likely won’t be completely out until winter, and it could take up to a decade for these areas to return to what they once were.
The lifting of the evacuations and the rising containment percentage gives the illusion that things are wrapping up.
In reality, the fire remains at a precarious balancing point that could easily shift again.
“This still has a lot of potential,” Zwierzchowski said.
The next few days will depend heavily on the weather. Northern Arizona is expected to be hit by either a monsoon storm or a drying trend. Drier weather could soak up all the moisture brought by rains earlier in the week, which would make it easier for the fire to gain ground again.
“We still have a lot of potential for growth,” Zwierzchowski said. “We still have a lot of work left to do ahead of us. We’re going to be here for the long haul.”
‘We had to do what we could’
Several hundred acres were proactively burned as part of a burnout attack to gain control and stop the blaze by strategically eliminating any fuels in the path of the fire. Burnouts can often increase the footprint of the fire, but they ultimately limit the impact if done right.
“This thing wanted to head to Flagstaff, and we had to do what we could to stop it,” Zwierzchowski said.
But fire is also a vital part of the forest’s ecosystem. The Ponderosa Pine relies on fire as part of its life cycle in order to propagate, and the forest naturally sees wildfires every 40 to 70 years.
“The right fire in the right environment is a great tool,” Zwierzchowski said. “Thousands of years ago, this fire would have progressed and done its clean-up job making things look like they should so these species can continue to thrive.”
Zwierzchowski pointed to the 1977 Radio Fire as a prime example of why wildfires are important to the natural ecosystem. The Museum Fire crossed into that more than 30-year-old burn scar, which was still in a stage of regrowth.
“We’re fortunate that it ran into the Radio Fire because the intensity was reduced,” Zwierzchowski said. “It gave us better ground to stand on.”
Previous thinning efforts by the U.S. Forest Service also helped keep the fire from spreading to the populated areas of Flagstaff.
However, some of the debris that came off the trees during the thinning hadn’t been removed from the forest floor yet. They ended up adding fuel to the fire, albeit less than other areas that hadn’t been thinned.
Flooding is an immediate concern
In Flagstaff, the community’s attention has shifted to concerns of flooding.
More rain could cause severe damage and put parts of the city still recovering from prior catastrophic flooding at even more of a risk, like what happened after the 2010 Schultz Fire. The burn scar from that fire has been prone to flooding that destroyed homes and even killed 12-year-old Shaelyn Wilson.
Some of the neighborhoods most affected by the Schultz Fire still remain on evacuation notice for the Museum Fire. They’ve seen extensive flooding in recent years, which may only worsen in light of the Museum Fire.
It’s impossible to predict how bad the flooding will be until the BAER team can identify the severity of the burn, the post-fire conditions and whether the watershed was impacted.
A 45-minute storm earlier this week pushed debris off the steeper slopes, down the forest roads and into the water drainage areas.
In some areas, the water traveled to a downtown street more than a mile away.