Firefighters spent most of Sunday strengthening fire lines in the Summerhaven area and burning down the ridge line north of the town as they continued to fight the 58,500-acre Bighorn Fire, officials said.
East of the Mount Lemmon Highway, crews are staying ahead of the fire’s edge and working to keep it from crossing the road near structures, said Rick Miller, an operations section chief of the Southwest Incident Management Team in a briefing Sunday afternoon. Pumps and sprinklers also were placed in the Willow Canyon area.
“Everything between Willow Canyon and Summerhaven has been prepped for structure protection with pumps and hand lines and we have a plan for all of that should the fire come this way,” Miller said.
As of Monday morning, no structures have been damaged in Summerhaven.
Fire continues to burn north on Samaniego Ridge, Miller said. Fire crews plan to engage the blaze once the fire comes down from rough terrain in a couple of days, he said.
Burnout operations near Oracle have been successful the past few days, Miller said. Fire crews are strengthening containment lines there and were preparing to continue the effort overnight Sunday, he said.
Crews have also started moving to the southeastern base of the mountains to prepare for the fire as it moves down to that end, Miller said.
The wildfire has died out in the Ventana Canyon area for the most part, and firefighters don’t expect any growth there, Miller said.
That section of Bighorn moved into desert terrain. With less vegetation to burn, the fire faced established fire lines and plenty of firefighters who would be on terrain that makes fighting the fire easier, said Travis Mabery, of the Southwest Incident Management Team, in a news briefing Sunday morning updating progress made fighting the blaze sparked June 5 by lighting.
“It kind of ran out of some fuels,” Mabery said of that portion of the wildfire that has left a nightly glow of orange flames that can be seen across the city each night. “It got into that Sonoran desert ecosystem. It just doesn’t have the ability to continue to back through there.”
He said the same thing is happening in the Esperero Canyon area.
The portion of the wildfire seen from Saddlebrooke was moving down Sunday to an area where it will be easier for crews on the ground to fight it. “We’re happy with how it’s coming down,” he said.
There are more than 950 people fighting the wildfire. One firefighter in the Summerhaven area had a "medical emergency" about 11:30 p.m. Sunday and was flown to a hospital. He's doing well, Mabery said in a Monday morning briefing.
As of Monday, the fire is about 16% contained.
"As the fire grows, our containment is going to go down," Mabery said. "This fire is up in the mountain range. It's the same story — we can’t put boots on the ground up there, so we’re prepping that outside. We have this outside perimeter ready, identified, our lines in place."
Across Arizona, hundreds of firefighters are fighting Bighorn and two other major wildfires.
Along with Bighorn, firefighting is taking place in the Tonto National Forest northeast of metro Phoenix, the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in northeast Arizona and the Kaibab National Forest north of the Grand Canyon, according to the Associated Press.
Authorities said the human-caused Bush Fire outside of metro Phoenix was 15% contained as of Sunday after charring 273 square miles since it started June 13 in the Tonto National Forest.
The Bighorn Fire was estimated Sunday to now cover some 80 square miles.
Meanwhile, authorities said the lightning-caused Bringham Fire was 20% contained by Sunday after burning 31 square miles in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest north of Morenci.