Wild Weather

[HisDaughter]

South storm death climbs to 193; 128 in Ala.
AP 4/28/11

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The death toll from severe storms that punished five Southern U.S. states jumped to a staggering 193 Thursday after Alabama canvassed its hard-hit counties for a new tally of lives lost.

Alabama's state emergency management agency said it had confirmed 128 deaths, up from at least 61 earlier.

"We expect that toll, unfortunately, to rise," Gov. Robert Bentley told ABC's "Good Morning America."

Mississippi officials reported 32 dead in that state and Tennessee raised its report to 14. Another 11 have been killed in Georgia and eight in Virginia.

The fierce storms Wednesday spawned tornadoes and winds that wiped out homes and businesses, forced a nuclear power plant to use backup generators and prompted the evacuation of a National Weather Service office.

The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said it received 137 tornado reports around the regions, including 66 in Alabama and 38 in Mississippi.

One of the hardest-hit areas was Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 and home to the University of Alabama. The city's police and other emergency services were devastated, the mayor said, and at least 15 people were killed and about 100 were in a single hospital.

A massive tornado, caught on video by a news camera on a tower, barreled through the city late Wednesday afternoon, leveling it.

By nightfall, the city was dark. Roads were impassable. Signs were blown down in front of restaurants, businesses were unrecognizable and sirens wailed off and on. Debris littered the streets and sidewalks.

College students in a commercial district near campus used flashlights to check out the damage.
At Stephanie's Flowers, owner Bronson Englebert used the headlights from two delivery vans to see what valuables he could remove. He had closed early, which was a good thing. The storm blew out the front of his store, pulled down the ceiling and shattered the windows, leaving only the curtains flapping in the breeze.

"It even blew out the back wall, and I've got bricks on top of two delivery vans now," Englebert said.

A group of students stopped to help Englebert, carrying out items like computers and printers and putting them in his van.

"They've been awfully good to me so far," Englebert said.

The storm system spread destruction from Texas to New York, where dozens of roads were flooded or washed out.

The governors in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia each issued emergency declarations for parts of their states.

President Barack Obama said he had spoken with Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and approved his request for emergency federal assistance, including search and rescue assets. About 1,400 National Guard soldiers were being deployed around the state.

"Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation, and we commend the heroic efforts of those who have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster," Obama said in a statement.

Around Tuscaloosa, traffic was snarled by downed trees and power lines, and some drivers abandoned their cars in medians.

"What we faced today was massive damage on a scale we have not seen in Tuscaloosa in quite some time," Mayor Walter Maddox said.

University officials said there didn't appear to be significant damage on campus, and dozens of students and locals were staying at a 125-bed shelter in the campus recreation center.

Volunteers and staff were providing food and water to people like 29-year-old civil engineering graduate student Kenyona Pierce.

"I really don't know if I have a home to go to," she said.

Storms also struck Birmingham, felling numerous trees that impeded emergency responders and those trying to leave hard-hit areas.

The Browns Ferry nuclear power plant about 30 miles west of Huntsville lost offsite power. The Tennessee Valley Authority-owned plant had to use seven diesel generators to power the plant's three units. The safety systems operated as needed and the emergency event was classified as the lowest of four levels, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

In Huntsville, meteorologists found themselves in the path of severe storms and had to take shelter in a reinforced steel room, turning over monitoring duties to a sister office in Jackson, Miss. Meteorologists saw multiple wall clouds, which sometimes spawn tornadoes, and decided to take cover, but the building wasn't damaged.

"We have to take shelter just like the rest of the people," said meteorologist Chelly Amin, who wasn't at the office at the time but spoke with colleagues about the situation.

In Kemper County, Miss., in the east-central part of the state, sisters Florrie Green and Maxine McDonald, and their sister-in-law Johnnie Green, all died in a mobile home that was destroyed by a storm.

"It's hard. It's been very difficult," said Mary Green, Johnnie Green's daughter-in-law. "They were thrown into those pines over there," she said, pointing to a wooded area. "They had to go look for their bodies."

In Choctaw County, Miss., a Louisiana police officer was killed Wednesday morning when a towering sweetgum tree fell onto his tent as he shielded his young daughter with his body, said Kim Korthuis, a supervisory ranger with the National Park Service. The girl wasn't hurt.

The 9-year-old girl was brought to a motor home about 100 feet away where campsite volunteer Greg Maier was staying with his wife. He went back to check on the father and found him dead.

"She wasn't hurt, just scared and soaking wet," Maier said.

Her father, Lt. Wade Sharp, had been with the Covington Police Department for 19 years.

"He was a hell of an investigator," said Capt. Jack West, his colleague in Louisiana.

In a neighborhood south of Birmingham, Austin Ransdell and a friend had to hike out after the house where he was living was crushed by four trees. No one was hurt.

As he walked away from the wreckage, trees and power lines crisscrossed residential streets, and police cars and utility trucks blocked a main highway.

"The house was destroyed. We couldn't stay in it. Water pipes broke; it was flooding the basement," he said. "We had people coming in telling us another storm was coming in about four or five hours, so we just packed up."

Not far away, Craig Branch was stunned by the damage.

"Every street to get into our general subdivision was blocked off. Power lines are down; trees are all over the road. I've never seen anything like that before," he said.

In eastern Tennessee, a woman was killed by falling trees in her trailer in Chattanooga. Just outside the city in Tiftonia, what appeared to be a tornado also struck at the base of the tourist peak Lookout Mountain.

Tops were snapped off trees and insulation and metal roof panels littered the ground. Police officers walked down the street, spray-painting symbols on houses they had checked for people who might be inside.

Mary Ann Bowman, 42, stood watching from her driveway as huge tractors moved downed trees in the street. She had rushed home from work to find windows shattered at her house, and her grandmother's house next door shredded. The 91-year-old woman wasn't home at the time.

"When I pulled up I just started crying," Bowman said.

[HisDaughter]

New Fears of Overdue "megathrust" earthquake in US North West
dailymail.co.uk

The north-west coast of the U.S. could be devastated by a huge movement of undersea plates known as a ‘megathrust’ earthquake, scientists say.

A review of the dangers posed by the Juan de Fuca plate released in the wake of the Japanese quake has raised fears that the Pacific seaboard could be similarly ravaged.

The horrifying possibilities have been brought to light by data researched by the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Laboratory at Oregon State University.

And the results are shown in a documentary, Megaquake: The Hour That Shook Japan, which is set to go out on the Discovery Channel in the UK this weekend.

The huge March 11 earthquake that sparked the tsunami off the coast of Japan may have been a ‘megathrust’ quake and now researchers fear the Cascadia fault line 50 miles off the U.S. coast could rupture and cause a quake and subsequent tsunami.

The average time along that fault between massive quakes above magnitude 8 is 240 years, said The Times, and the last 'megaquake' was just over 300 years ago.

'Megathrusts' are the world's largest earthquakes, and happen in a 'subduction zone', a region where one of the earth's tectonic plates is thrust under another. The last one involving Cascadia was estimated at magnitude 9 on the Richter scale, according to Natural Resources Canada.

The Juan de Fuca plate is being forced under the North America plate along the Cascadia fault and, as large parts of the plates are locked together, stress is being built up until an eventual breakage causes a massive earthquake.

Professor Chris Goldfinger, director of the Laboratory at Oregon State University, told the newspaper that their information showed an increase in pressure at the plates: 'It's loading a spring for a future earthquake, there's no doubt about that.'

And geologist Jeffrey Park, director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, said in a recent - separate - article: 'History tells us that more megathrust earthquakes could occur in the next decade, but we have no evidence that the recent rate of nearly one megathrust per year will persist for longer than that.'

Cascadia, which stretches from Vancouver island to northern California, has been dormant for over 300 years but scientists now believe there is a 45 per cent probability of an earthquake of an 8.0 magnitude or higher in the next 50 years. They add there is a 15 per cent chance of magnitude 9 or more.

Such a quake could produce a massive tsunami and engulf the Pacific Northwest coast, affecting Oregon, Washington state and Vancouver Island, according to The Times, with a tsunami with waves of up to 30metres high and potentially reaching Japan.

The threat is all the more serious as several cities in the north-west of the U.S. are not adequately prepared for the type of devastation a ‘megathrust’ quake could wreak.

An upgrade programme is currently underway to protect the settlements most at risk.

Skyscrapers built in Seattle before 1994 - prior to more stringent building regulations - would be liable to collapse and countless small coastal communities could be swept away due to flooding. Some 1,000 schools in Oregon are reportedly judged to have poor resistance to eruptions, but the refurbishment is not set to be completed until 2032.

However, experts are unable to be specific about when a quake could hit.

‘We don't know how to tell you, “Hey, next week, you know, get out of town there's going to be a big earthquake”,’ Tom Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Centre, told The Times.

John McCloskey, Professor of Geophysics at the University, added: ‘The problem with using a recurrence timeline is that earthquakes can be more like buses, coming two or three at a time rather than regularly.

‘We need a vision of what the biggest quake is likely to be in a region and then protect against that.’

WHAT IS A ‘MEGATHRUST’ EARTHQUAKE?

All six earthquakes with a 9.0 magnitude or higher since 1900 have been megathrust quakes
They occur when a tectonic plate is forced under another
Megathrusts are most common in the Pacific and Indian oceans
The March 11 earthquake in Japan has been classed as a 9.0 quake and can be called a megathrust
The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which killed over 230,000 people, was caused by a 'megathrust'

[HisDaughter]

Global disaster impact on the rise
cbc.ca

The global impact of natural disasters took a turn for the worse in 2010 with an uptick in fatalities and economic damage, according to a report released Tuesday.

There were 385 natural disasters worldwide last year that killed more than 297,000 people, affected over 217 million others and caused $ 123.9 billion in economic damages, according to the Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2010.

The number of victims increased from 198.7 million in 2009 to 217.3 million in 2010, while economic damages from natural disasters in 2009 were $47.6 billion.

"Two mega-disasters made 2010 the deadliest year in at least two decades," said the report.

First, Haiti suffered 222,570 fatalities, and had over 39.1 per cent of its population — or a total of 3.9 million victims — affected by the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake.

Second, Russia, which was affected by extreme temperatures, floods and wildfires, had a total of 55,800 deaths. Most fatalities were due to the heat wave that occurred from June to August.

In terms of economic impact, the Chilean earthquake of Feb. 27, 2010, ranked highest with $30 billion in damages. The floods and landslides in China from May to August ranked second, costing $18 billion.

The Haiti earthquake, which caused damages of $8 billion, was especially destructive in view of the country's already impoverished economy.

Globally, more hydrological disasters were reported in 2010, and together with meteorological disasters — the second-most frequent disasters — accounted for 79 per cent of total disasters.

[HisDaughter]

Global disaster impact on the rise

Gee.  Ya think?  It's called "birthing pains" folks!

[HisDaughter]

Flooded Montana towns prepare for more water
msnbc.com

Montana communities took advantage of a break in rainy weather to clear flood debris from homes and roadways as states downstream prepared for floodwaters from the higher elevations and releases from their own burgeoning dams.

A respite in weather that has brought as much as 8 inches of rainfall over a span of a few days to some areas of Montana had allowed waters to recede slightly in several flooded communities, giving emergency crews the chance Saturday to fix some water-damaged roads.

But it looked brief with the National Weather Service predicting up to 3 inches of rainfall from Sunday to Monday. Meteorologist Keith Meier also warned that high temperatures and melting snowpack in the Rocky Mountains next week would likely swell rivers for even longer.

"Take a little time to breathe today, figure out what you need to do but don't let your guard down," said Cheri Kilby, Disaster and Emergency Coordinator for Fergus County.

Authorities have already started releasing massive volumes of water from overburdened reservoirs. The releases coupled with the floodwaters have been predicted to cause flooding downstream, possibly in the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri.

The Army Corps of Engineers is increasing releases from Missouri River dams because of higher rain forecasts. In South Dakota, the revised release plan means water levels in Yankton, Dakota Dunes will be higher than previously expected, the governor said.

Gov. Dennis Daugaard advised residents to be ready to evacuate. About 17,000 people live in the two communities.

"We expect flooding in these communities to be significant," the governor said. "I urge property owners in these areas to begin to plan immediately for an evacuation and to take steps to protect themselves and their property."

Near Bismark, N.D., the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planned to increase releases over the coming weeks at Garrison Dam, about 75 miles upstream on the Missouri River. Plans also called for releasing water at four other Missouri River reservoirs.

The Missouri River in Bismark was slightly below flood stage of 16 feet on Saturday, but well out of its banks in some parts of the city and nearby Mandan, and officials are building levees to protect the city from a flood stage of 21 feet.

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple also said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had expanded its federal emergency declaration to include seven state counties and the Standing Rock Reservation as they fight rising water on the Missouri River.

A state of disaster also was declared Friday on the Fort Berthold Reservation by Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Tex Hall, who said flooding had damaged homes and other buildings, swamped farmland and caused highways to erode.

FEMA issued an emergency declaration in early April for 14 counties hit with flooding.

In Montana, Gov. Brian Schweitzer deployed Montana National Guard soldiers to the Crow Reservation, one of the hardest hit areas, a day after touring the area.

The guardsmen were setting up unarmed security checkpoints on the Crow Reservation Saturday afternoon to help with emergency response. Crow Tribe officials earlier in the week requested National Guard aid after heavy rainfall put much of the reservation under water and left residents stranded.

Crow Chairman Cedric Black Eagle said the tribal government helped pump water out of flooded basements and clear off roads so families could return and start to repair their homes.

It was possible people would have to leave the reservation again if water levels began to rise again, he said.

To the northwest, the small agricultural town of Roundup seemed to retain much of its flood water and the Musselshell River level was hardly declining, emergency officials said. Road closures have cut the town off from all directions but the north.

Director of Disaster and Emergency services for Musselshell County Jeff Gates said people are still stranded around the town. Gates said there is little emergency crews can do at this point but provide people with supplies they need and wait for water to go down.

Gates said that doesn't look to be likely for quite a while.

He is concerned about the town running out of freshwater and residents are being told to conserve as much as they can.

Businesses are having a hard time getting supplies and residents are mostly helpless to do anything about several feet of water on the southern side of town.

The businesses that have managed to stay open have seen quite a few customers, frustrated with nothing else to do but wait out the water.

Everett Reaves, owner of the Keg Bar in Roundup said a number of people are coming out to his bar.

"When things are down, people go to places like this to forget about it," he said.

Blaine Tull, who runs the Pioneer Café in Roundup with his wife, had a different take on the situation and the water conservation.

"Ain't no sense in getting frustrated with something you can't change," he said

[HisDaughter]

More Rain Falls on Flood-Soaked Montana Towns
AP 5/30/2011

More rain began falling Sunday on soaked Montana communities after more than a week of floods in the region, along with a heavy mountain snowpack and burgeoning dams, prompted states downstream to also prepare for flooding.

A break in rainy weather at the start of the long holiday weekend allowed Montana residents to clear flood debris from homes and roads, but the respite wasn't expected to last long. The National Weather Service predicted up to 3 inches of rainfall from Sunday to Monday in the wake of a previous storm that brought as much as 8 inches to some areas of the state.

Officials warned ongoing flooding could ultimately be the worst in decades for the state, with an unusually heavy snowpack in the mountains, persistent spring rains and waterlogged ground incapable of soaking up any more moisture.

As much as 18 inches of snow is predicted for the region's Beartooth Mountains this week, said Marc Singer of the National Weather Service in Billings, and temperatures at lower elevations could be above 70 degrees by Thursday.

"No part of the state is expected to not have some type of flooding," Monique Lay, spokeswoman for the state Emergency Coordination Center, said in anticipation of more rain and melting snowpack. "It's statewide, corner to corner."

The weather service for the second weekend in a row blanketed much of the central and eastern regions of Montana with flood warnings on Sunday, and Gov. Brian Schweitzer sent 36 National Guard soldiers to Roundup, a town northwest of Billings in central Montana that remained inundated by several feet of water for a fourth day.

Only one road leading into the agriculture and mining town was open, and the governor's order to deploy the National Guard to the community came a day after he sent 50 guardsmen to the Crow Reservation, which also has been inundated by heavy flooding. The National Guard contingents were to provide unarmed security checkpoints.

About 1,500 North Dakota National Guard soldiers also have been summoned to help in the flood effort there as residents in Bismarck, N.D., and nearby Mandan brace for mass amounts of water to be released in the coming weeks at Garrison Dam, a Missouri River reservoir bloated by large inflows of rain and melting snow in Montana, Wyoming and western North Dakota.

The Missouri River on Sunday was slightly below flood stage of 16 feet.

In South Dakota, several hundred homeowners in low-lying areas of Pierre and Fort Pierre also have been working feverishly for several days, moving their belongings to higher ground and laying sandbags around the houses.

Water had already moved into some residential areas of Fort Pierre, and was expected to rise another 4 feet in Pierre and Fort Pierre within a couple of weeks.

In perhaps a sign of weariness in Montana, the state Emergency Coordination Center on Sunday felt compelled to issue a statement saying Fort Peck Dam is not in danger of failing in an effort to quell what spokeswoman Lay said were persistent rumors being voiced at many local meetings.

"There is a lot of frustration and devastation," said Lay about what residents are facing.

The spillway at Fort Peck Dam, which backs up the 134-mile long Fort Peck Lake, operated earlier this month for the first time since 1997, said Jody Farhat, Chief of the Missouri River Basin Water Management office with the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

She said water will pass over the spillway again starting Thursday as the Corps plans to build to a record release of 50,000 cubic feet per second by June 6. The previous record, she said, was 35,000 cfs in 1975. She reiterated that the dam is absolutely safe.

Farhat said all six mainstem dams on the Missouri River are being operated in a coordinated way to handle what she said is likely a record runoff for the basin.

[HisDaughter]

Arizona Fire Burns Summer Cabins, Forces Evacuations
AP 6/4/2011

Crews on Saturday worked to protect several small Arizona communities from two large wildfires by clearing away brush near homes and planning to set fires aimed at robbing the blazes of their fuel.

The Wallow Fire, near the White Mountain community of Alpine, grew to 218 square miles, or more than 140,000 acres, by Saturday morning.

The fire is the third largest in state history, with its smoke visible in parts of southern Colorado. Fire officials said they had zero containment of the fire near the New Mexico-Arizona state line, which has forced an unknown number of people to evacuate.

The fire has burned four summer rental cabins since it started May 29, the U.S. Forest Service said.

Crews were working to protect homes in Alpine and nearby Nutrioso from the fire and blowing embers that could start smaller, spot fires. The fire had reached Alpine's outskirts and was about two miles away from homes in Nutrioso, said Bob Dyson, a spokesman for the team fighting the blaze.

Related Links
After Historic Mississippi Flood, Some Residents Are Forced to Start OverA shift in winds around mid-afternoon Saturday blew embers that started a spot fire at the southwestern corner of Alpine. A helicopter knocked down that fire by dumping water on it, and no buildings were damaged or destroyed as a result.

The yellowish smoke in Alpine was so heavy that it reduced visibility to about a quarter mile.

Authorities Friday night warned residents of the town of Greer to be ready to leave, but no evacuation order has been issued. Greer has fewer than 200 permanent residents, but the town and area attract many vacationers.

Gov. Jan Brewer traveled to Springerville to get a briefing from fire team's commander and took an aerial tour of the blaze to get an appreciation for its scope and size, said Matthew Benson, a spokesman for Brewer.

"The governor's main concern is for the families living in the White Mountains and the firefighters and emergency personnel responding to this fire," Benson said. "It's an extremely dangerous fire at this point."

In terms of size, the Wallow Fire ranks behind Arizona's 469,000-acre Rodeo-Chediski Fire in 2002 and the 248,000-acre Cave Creek complex fire in 2005.

Meanwhile, crews were trying to protect a church camp and two communities from the Horseshoe Two fire that had burned 140 square miles in far southern Arizona. It's the fifth-largest fire in state history.

The 90,000-acre blaze had come within a mile of the evacuated Methodist church camp in the steep Pine Canyon near the community of Paradise on Friday night.

"It will be a major concern until the fire passes there," Dave Killebrew, a spokesman for the team fighting the fire.

Helicopters were dumping water and retardant on a hotspot near the camp. "As far as I know, (the fire) hasn't gotten into the camp," Killebrew said Saturday.

Crews also were focusing on protecting the evacuated communities of Paradise and East Whitetail Canyon. Paradise fared well Friday as crews set fires that burned natural forest fuels and kept the blaze from about a dozen occupied homes and many other vacation residences.

The fire was within two miles of the eight to 10 homes in East Whitetail Canyon. The blaze is 50 percent contained.

The nearby Chiricahua National Monument was closed as a precaution.

The Horseshoe Two fire has been burning since May 8 and about 800 firefighters were battling it.

[HisDaughter]

3,500 Evacuate as Volcano Erupts in Southern Chile
AP 6/5/2011

One of the volcanos in the Caulle Cordon of southern Chile erupted violently Saturday, billowing smoke and ash high into the sky and prompting more than 3,500 people living nearby to evacuate.

There were no reports of injuries.

Authorities initially said the Puyehue volcano was involved, but later said the eruption was occurring about 2 1/2 miles (four kilometers) from that peak.

A rift more than six miles (10 kilometers) long and three miles (five kilometers) across was torn in the earth's crust, officials said Saturday night.

Authorities had put the area on alert Saturday morning after a flurry of earthquakes, and the eruption began in the afternoon.

The National Emergency Office said it recorded an average of 230 tremors an hour.

About 600 people were evacuated when the first alert went up and hundreds more left their homes after the eruption began.

Rodrigo Ubilla, Chile's undersecretary of labor, said some people near the volcano had decided not to leave their homes because they didn't want to abandon their animals.

Wind carried ash across the Andes to the Argentine tourist town of San Carlos de Bariloche, which had to close its airport.

Officials warned residents of the Bariloche area to take precautions against a possible prolonged ashfall. They urged people to stock up on food and water and to stay home.

The eruption is nearly 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of Chile's national capital, Santiago.

[Shammu]

Wallow Fire - Fire rages on burning close to 200,000 acres


A community meeting will be held  at the Springerville High School Auditorium, Mon. Jun. 6 at 6pm.

The evacuation of Blue River residents by Greenlee County officials remains in effect.

Residents in the communities affected by this fire are asked to remain prepared in the event an order is needd.

The evacuation order for the communities of Alpine and Nutrioso by Apache County Emergency Management remain in effect.

Evacuations today by the Apache County Sheriff’s Office included the following subdivisions along Hwys 180/191: Escudilla Mountain Estates, Bonita, White Mtn. Acres, and the H-V Ranch.  This area includes CR 4000, CR 4001, and CR 4225.

The pre-evacuation notice by the Apache County Sheriff’s Office to the residents of Greer community and the surrounding areas remains in effect.

Catron County Sheriff’s Office has issued a pre-evacuation notice to the residents of Luna, New Mexico.

Fire Facts:

Date Started: 5/29/2011

Number of Personnel:  Approximately 2,315 personnel, Including 31 hotshot crews and 25 handcrewsIncluding 31 hotshot crews and 25 handcrews

Location: south and west of Alpine, Arizona

Cause: Human – under investigation

Equipment: 12 dozers, 138 engines, 31 watertenders

Size:  192,746   

Aircraft:  22 helicopters

Percent Contained: 0%   

Injuries to Date: none

Fire Update

Firefighters continue perimeter control in conjunction with San Carlos and Ft. Apache Indian reservations and continue point protection around values at risk.

Storm and wind activity caused embers to spot over the U.S. Hwy. 191 resulting in a flurry of fire activity around Alpine and Nutrioso to include Escudilla Mountain .

Structural protection and perimeter control continue in the evacuated communities.

A red flag warning is in effect, 10 am – 8 pm with low humidity.

Closures:

Due to extreme fire conditions, the Apache National Forest is closed to all public entry.  Property owners and their guests will continue to have access to private lands within the Forest.  See website for closure order details.  Please see the Forest website for more information: http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/asnf/

Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests Fire Restrictions: A Temporary Emergency Closure Order for the Apache National Forest was issued effective June 3 at 12:00 p.m. (noon).  For more information, please call the Arizona fire restrictions hotline 1-877-864-6985 or visit http://www.wildlandfire.az.gov/.

Wallow Fire update June 6 - Fire rages on burning close to 200,000 acres
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes I am concerned about this fire. We don't need another Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona or anywhere in the world. I wouldn't wish a fire (especially this fire) upon any one!! The fire is only 50 miles away from us but, we are ready to leave if we have to go..............

Map with a over lay of the Wallow Fire.

Another map with a legend

[nChrist]

Yes I am concerned about this fire. We don't need another Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona or anywhere in the world. I wouldn't wish a fire (especially this fire) upon any one!! The fire is only 50 miles away from us but, we are ready to leave if we have to go..............

This will be a matter of prayer. Oklahoma and Texas both had rounds of wildfires recently, and prolonged periods of drought made them much worse. If I remember correctly, over 1 million acres of land was burned in Texas. We had fires that got within 2 miles of us, but more than adequate warnings were given to those who should be evacuated. I'm hoping that the same is true for you and your threatening situation. In the meantime, this will be a matter of prayer. Many in these states and others have lost all they own.

[HisDaughter]

This will be a matter of prayer. Oklahoma and Texas both had rounds of wildfires recently, and prolonged periods of drought made them much worse. If I remember correctly, over 1 million acres of land was burned in Texas. We had fires that got within 2 miles of us, but more than adequate warnings were given to those who should be evacuated. I'm hoping that the same is true for you and your threatening situation. In the meantime, this will be a matter of prayer. Many in these states and others have lost all they own.

I ditto this!

[Shammu]

Brothers and sisters, trust me I am praying. In fact I know of a whole bunch of people praying. The out look for today is good for fighting the Wallow Fire. Sunday though, the winds are expected to come back up with gusts to 35 MPH.

So far 408,887 acres have burnt (based on infrared flight)
Specific Area Activity

Alpine - Structure protection in good shape

Nutrioso - Lines in good shape, will be doing burn out operation on east side to reinforce line

Alpine and Nutrioso are without power.

Springerville - west of town along the hwy will be doing additional burnout using aerial ignition.

East side - West of Escudilla Mountain on fire perimeter – are extending fire line south parallel to state line.

Burro Mountain - Burnout operation to protect Burro Mountain

Water Canyon - Will be extending burnout areas to improve protection of Eagar and Springerville.

Greer - Continuing with structure protection and extending fire line east and south in preparation of a burnout operation.  Increasing Fire fighting resources.

Greer Structure assessment - 22 homes destroyed, 5 homes damaged, 24 outbuildings             destroyed, 1 truck destroyed. Sheriff’s department is tracking and notifying homeowners.

[nChrist]

Hello Brother Bob,

Yes, this is still a matter of daily prayer for me and many others. I've been trying to follow some of this on the news. Just know that you and many others will be in my prayers - certainly including those who are fighting the fires.

Love In Christ,
Tom