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Cellar Fire Fully Contained; Crews Expect No Risk For Flooding

The Cellar Fire burning 16 miles southeast of Prescott is now fully contained, and attention now turns to the damage done and threats from monsoon storms over the next few weeks.

It took fire crews two and a half weeks to get a line around the 11 square mile Cellar Fire. That was far faster than the Goodwin wildfire, which forced mass evacuations in nearby Mayer in June 2017.

Although that fire left a 45 square mile scar along the Bradshaw Mountains, the Cellar Fire's scar should not contribute to that region's flood risk.

"This fire is not in the location where the Goodwin fire was a couple years ago," said Prescott National Forest spokeswoman Debbie Maneely, "so any threats from storm damage from this fire will not affect those residents over there in that area."

By comparison, Maneely said, the lightning-caused Cellar Fire caused little damage because most of the fuel burned at low to moderate levels and appeared to have left no long-term impact to the soil.

Holliday Moore was a reporter at KJZZ from 2017 to 2020.