In the area north of Sedona, the Pocket Fire continues to grow — and more communities are preparing to evacuate.
The fire has spread rapidly in recent days as dry and windy conditions continue. On Monday alone, the fire jumped to more than 15,000 acres, and it is still zero percent contained.
Photos and videos show flames burning over the rim of Oak Creek Canyon — one of our state’s most beloved destinations on fire. The smoke is billowing over Flagstaff, roads are closed, and the communities of Oak Creek Canyon, Kachina Village, Forest Highlands and Pine Del are under evacuation warnings.
For more on the fire’s spread and efforts battle it, The Show spoke to John Truett, state fire manager at the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Thank you for joining us.
JOHN TRUETT: Thank you for having me. Good morning.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so I gave the big-picture numbers there, 15,000 acres, 0% contained. Tell us first, John, just how bad is this?
JOHN TRUETT: Being up here, we have our incident management team up here. And this piece of ground out here is the toughest piece of ground in the West to fight fire in, and it’s just very extreme conditions.
And then then you add on top of that, the long term drought, the dryness of the vegetation, and then the topper on all that was a very, very, very rare event of a three day extended Red Flag where we had 40 mile an hour to 50 mile an hour gusty winds. So that led to all the the spread of the fire.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. So you’ve got these dry, windy conditions. We’ve had this notoriously dry spring, dry summer so far. Are we expecting anytime soon these conditions to to change? Is there any relief in sight in terms of the weather?
JOHN TRUETT: The only relief is is that we we’ve dropped the wind velocities. Here on site on the fire itself, we have our our incident meteorologist, and he’s still looking out seven to 10 days out and still no signs of moisture from the monsoon. So we’re going to stay warm and dry.
LAUREN GILGER: Seven to 10 days. You’ve got more than 900 firefighters battling this blaze, personnel up there. Tell us about about what they’re trying to do. Like this is really rugged terrain, what tactics can they use in this area to try to start containing this fire?
JOHN TRUETT: Yeah, we’ve used a matter some strategies in getting out in front of the fire, doing our our back burning out in front to take that fuel away from the the main fire, which has been very, very successful. We are on the offensive now to where the winds have died down, the fire is not pushing us around, we’re dictating it now. So we’re actually putting a little more what we call black in front of the the main fire, and we’re being very successful.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, OK. Several communities are under the the set status. This is in the model of ready, set, go in terms of evacuations. They are one step from evacuation now. What do they need to be doing?
JOHN TRUETT: To stay vigilant. Again, on the western or the eastern side of this fire, in the in the West Fork drainage area, we are being very successful in there. We’re we’re minimizing the fire spread as it is now. So we are reducing the threat to those communities, but the threat is not gone yet.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. How do you determine when it’s time for folks to leave in an evacuation scenario like this?
JOHN TRUETT: We rely on our science of the fire as far as our our fire behavior analysts, our our IMET. We start determining this fire to the the spread of the fire, the velocity of the the winds, and actually the time it takes to evacuate that community, all those factors come into play. And what we do is we have a strategic line on a map we say if this fire meets that line, it’s time to time to go. So it’s a very pre-planned event.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. I want to ask you about the broader picture on this wildfire season, John. Is this just the beginning? As I mentioned, we’ve had this very dry spring, dry summer so far, lots of kind of kindle for fuel out there. Are we looking at lots of fires like this and worse?
JOHN TRUETT: You know, historically, we would be on the down side, but typically late June, early July is the most extreme time of fire spread in Arizona. And unfortunately, it’s it’s the time of most of our fatalities have happened. So as time goes on, we’re still looking at in a severe state.
But as we go into July, hopefully, we’ll get some moisture in the air and we’ll start on the downward trend. But the Western states are are starting to pick up. You look at Utah, Colorado, all those fires, and unfortunately we had the fatality up in Utah, but they are they are just now starting their fire season. So it’s going to be a long fire season throughout the West.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, throughout the entire West. You mentioned the fatality of that firefighter, one from Arizona, three in total on the Utah-Colorado border fighting a fire there. Is there enough personnel to go around right now, John? Are folks going to end up in these dangerous situations more often?
JOHN TRUETT: Well, it’s it’s not really the shortage, it’s just the again, just realizing extreme conditions. This is actually the start of the remembrance week for our fallen firefighters. And you look at every time that we have a fatality, it’s an overwhelming event with the weather. So we just need to stay vigilant on on keeping our eye on the weather and the fire spread. We are always going to run into shortages. Nationally, we’re on preparedness level 4. That’s when you really start to get to the national coordination of moving troops and firefighters around the whole nation.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK. We’ll leave it there. John Truett, state fire manager at the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management, joining us with the latest on the Pocket Fire burning near Oak Creek Canyon. John, thank you for coming on, appreciate it.
JOHN TRUETT: All right. Thank you.
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