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Woodbury Wildfire Near 80% Contained, Focus Turns To Soil Retention

The Woodbury Fire northeast of Apache Junction is now more than 80% contained and evacuated residents are being allowed back home. Fire crews, meanwhile, have a different but related challenge.

“We're doing an analysis first hand, looking at the burn severity in the area," Dolores Garcia with the Woodbury Fire explained, "to see what kind of impacts could be had downstream if a large storm were to come through.”

As of Tuesday morning, nearly 200 square miles have burned in the wild lands northeast of Phoenix. That, Garcia said, sets the stage for severe flash flooding as the soil washes away when the rains arrive.

Crews only have a few weeks to work on soil retention before meteorologists predict the first heavy monsoon rains are expected in the area.

Holliday Moore is a native Arizonan and veteran journalist who joined KJZZ’s news team in January 2017.Moore graduated from Arizona State University after double majoring in mass communications and marketing/management. She spent her first two decades reporting for television news, beginning in small markets and working up to congressional correspondent in Washington, D.C., for a political news service.Family commitments in Arizona brought her back to the Southwest, where she covered legislative and court beats for Albuquerque’s KRQE-TV and the infamous Four Corner Manhunt as KREZ-TV’s managing editor.Back home in Phoenix, she developed ABC15’s “Democracy Project,” now instituted at all Scripps’ news stations nationwide. Her work garnered “Best Practices” recognition by the Poynter Institute and the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism.Her television reports, from sports to cultural issues, earned her multiple Emmy and Associated Press nominations, including a Rocky Mountain Emmy for her Hopi Partition Land Act coverage.As she started a family, Moore started her own media production agency, producing magazine-style travel stories for the Emmy-winning Arizona Highways Television show while working part time for a Valley radio station. She is convinced radio is where visual, sound, and print are merging through deeper storytelling. In her relatively short time with radio network affiliates, she has won four Edward R. Murrow Awards and multiple nominations from other professional news societies.Moore now teaches advanced broadcast writing to the next generation of reporters at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where a high percentage have gone on to receive national awards for their work in her class. She enjoys being back home near childhood friends and sharing the beautiful Arizona desert with her husband and young son.