Portal, Late Summer

We've had a full week! Many friends who know the Sky Islands choose the late monsoon season to visit, when hummingbirds are streaming south, nectar-feeding bats cluster around the feeders, and masses of clouds keep the temperatures just about perfect. (Of course the gnats find the temperature perfect too!)

South Fork, singed trees and all, has been the site of much trogon activity this week! (Photos by Narca)

Diminutive Buff-breasted Flycatcher along the Herb Martyr Road

Jon Dunn, our good friend of several decades (!––How can it have been so long?), is in town with his WINGS group, and yesterday I joined them for a fine day in the field. We wandered down Herb Martyr Road, where flash floods the day before had brought new debris across the road, and had also cut a new trench at the Crystal Cave wash, though it was manageable in the big van with its high clearance. After Herb Martyr and a stop at Southwest Research Station for the hummingbird show, we continued to the barricades at East Turkey Creek––the current site for anyone undertaking The Great Mexican Chickadee Quest. The higher Chiricahuas are still closed due to danger from the big Horseshoe Two burn and associated flash flooding.

The day brought many highlights:

We did find a Mexican Chickadee, albeit only one, and not terribly cooperative. Today Jon and friends will make a second try for better looks at The Chickadee. The Chiricahuas are the only accessible locale in the States to find this prize. They also live in a mountain range in the bootheel of New Mexico, but that is on private land and access is difficult, even on the very rare occasions when permission can be obtained.

One of the fledgling Northern Goshawks was broadcasting his wish for a meal. Jon spotted the bird in a pine not far away, and several enjoyed scope views of the youngster before he moved higher up the ridge.

Montezuma Quail covey (Detail from watercolor by Narca)

Returning, one of our folks spotted a male Montezuma Quail, standing stockstill on a rock, not 20 feet from the road. From inside the van, we scrutinized the place until several more of these cryptic birds revealed themselves. It was a family group––a gorgeous pair of adults with about six half-grown chicks in tow.

Acorn Woodpecker at Jackie's feeders in Paradise

After a stop at Jackie and Winston's feeders in Paradise (Juniper Titmouse––yes!), we headed back to Portal. Along the way, a richly-colored Blacktail Rattlesnake decided that the big white van was definitely suspect, and a shower of sound cascaded from its rattles as we photographed the beauty.

Black-tailed Rattlesnake decides that the van isn't trustworthy.

The evening finale brought great views of a little Western Screech Owl and the swooping mass of nectar-feeding bats that visit our hummingbird feeders each night at this time of year. The nearly full moon illumined drifts of cloud in the deep night sky.

Wrenching News

I don't think I can report dispassionately the latest developments in the Horseshoe Two Fire, raging in the Chiricahua Mountains. When the fire jumped containment lines near Saulsbury Saddle, it roared through Rustler Park, Onion Saddle, Barfoot Park, and the high ridges so familiar to everyone who has roamed the high Chiricahuas. I am hearing from friends who are heartbroken. It is too soon to know just what has been lost.

In the other direction, fire raced in high winds through the village of Paradise, toward Whitetail Canyon, and Helen reported that last night Jhus Canyon was burning, next to Whitetail. So far people's homes and historic structures like the George Walker House in Paradise have been spared, thanks to thorough preparatory work by fire crews.

After the two weeks of very hard work by Dugger Hughes' Type 1 fire team, they have to feel terribly disheartened at the end of their rotation here, to see the fire escape because two firebrands were thrown by high winds, and started new fires 1.5 and 2 miles away. But without their valiant efforts, the outcome would have been so much worse. We likely would have seen the eradication of communities too.

We have been very focused, understandably, on the crisis in our backyard. Similar fires are raging throughout drought-stricken Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas. The Bear Wallow Fire near Alpine AZ just started, and yet blew to over 100,000 acres in just two days, as it roars through pine forest on the Mogollon Rim.

South of the border in Mexico, the entire Sierra Madre Occidental has been going up in flames, and Mexico does not have the resources which we have to deal with fire. So it is all just burning. "Sierra Madre" means the "Mother Mountains" and they are the heart of the habitats we so treasure in the Chiricahuas and other sky islands of the Southwest. The Sierra Madre has been an evolutionary cauldron for New World pine trees, and oaks, and madrones. They are the home of Eared Quetzals, Mountain Trogons, Thick-billed Parrots--and, of course, people.

You can see the extent of the fires on Google Earth. Many Norteamericanos have traveled the rail between Los Mochis and Chihuahua City, which runs through Copper Canyon and Tarahumara country. People in Portal have often sent supplies--ranging from clothes to school supplies to vitamins--to the mission school in Creel (visits which ceased when violence in Mexico escalated to the point that friends in Mexico advised against further trips for the time being). That region is burning. I may have missed something, but so far I haven't seen a single report in US newspapers about the plight of our neighbors to the south and the immense fires they are suffering.

The Border communities that are bearing the brunt of problems associated with illegal trafficking (fires, killings, home break-ins) are also communities with deep ties to Mexico. Many of us have travelled there for decades. We have led tours there, working with Mexican co-leaders. Our schools have exchange programs. Our biologists have worked with Mexican biologists to monitor and conserve species that are important to both countries, whether jaguars, or waterfowl, or parrots, or native fish, or prairie dogs. The cross-border relationship is vibrant, mutually beneficial, and highly valued.

We can affirm our continuing goodwill and friendship with Mexico while still acknowledging the serious border problems. It is important that other regions of the US understand that the border problems are real and must be addressed. Distant problems are all too easy to ignore. Please know that the outcry in Border communities is not based on prejudice, for the most part, but on actual, serious problems, which must be dealt with for the good of the whole country.

Mexicans are and have been our friends, and we lament the crises they are now suffering--crises of drug-related violence, of rampant fire, of economy.

The Long Siege Lengthens

As we thought we were seeing an end to the fire and its attendant stresses (with containment being predicted for June 22), the Horseshoe Two Fire has broken free of containment lines to move across Rock Creek Canyon and northeast toward Paradise, East Whitetail Canyon, and Chiricahua National Monument. The Monument is temporarily closed to visitors, and residents of Paradise and Whitetail are being evacuated––again, in the case of Paradise. One Whitetail resident was told yesterday that the fire was "still a day away" from her home.

Unexpected high winds caused the fire to jump to the north side of Rock Canyon, generating flame lengths 200 feet high in a veritable firestorm. (At the start of the fire on May 8, Barney Tomberlin––one of Portal's volunteer firemen who tackled the new conflagration––also estimated those initial flames to be 200 feet high and the convection column of smoke to be 20,000 feet high.)

Those appalling flames released embers that caused two new fires to start near Saulsbury Saddle, more than a mile and a half from the containment lines. One of those new fires had grown to 400 acres by yesterday morning.

Firefighters had to disengage from working the line in Rustler Park yesterday because the danger was too great. (Thus far, there have only been 7 injuries, thankfully all minor.)

News from the southwest part of the fire was better: the burnout along a 6-mile stretch of Tex Canyon Road was finished yesterday. That part of the perimeter is more secure, although smoke from the operation was very heavy and contributed to the pall that continues to shroud the northern end of the Chiricahuas, making breathing very uncomfortable and difficult for residents there.

The overall fire size is now 86,140 acres and is considered 50% contained (a drop from yesterday's 75% containment figure). The fire crews had begun to scale back, and now 825 personnel remain of the 900+ that were here a few days ago. With the new menace from the fire, will that scaling back continue?

When a crisis is viewed from a distance (right now, South Carolina), questions multiply. If any of our Portal friends send more information today, I'll post it.

What friends have been sending me is a link to the New York Times article questioning whether the fire was started by illegal immigrants. In the strictest sense, it is an accurate article. The only proof is circumstantial. However, the article also seems to diminish and discount the actual, daily effects of illegal immigration and smuggling on our communities, among them the settlements in and around the Chiricahua Mountains.

I would like to challenge the New York Times to send a reporter to live in one of our Border communities for a year, interacting frequently with Border Patrol, and then to write an investigative article about the real problems caused by illegal traffic of both humans and drugs. It sounds like Pulitzer Prize material to me.

The Burn-out in Cave Creek Canyon

At this morning's briefing, the fire crews were told that the burn-out operation in the South Fork of Cave Creek Canyon is proceeding so far at a low intensity. That is very good news.

After the briefing, with smoke from Horseshoe Two Fire

(Photos by Narca)

Right now our weather is transitioning from a high pressure system (with mild wind) to a major deep pressure system, now building in the Pacific Northwest. As that low pressure system moves across to the north of us, it will bring high winds again. So the crews are doing everything they can in the next two days to accomplish a low-intensity burn-out in critical habitats, before the wind can once again control what happens on the Horseshoe Two fire. The relatively light winds today are predicted for about 10 mph, with gusts to 25 or 30 mph. Winds continue to blow mainly from the southwest.

On the day of origin, Horseshoe Two ran north for about 7 miles during a single day, while in the grip of high winds. Right now the fire is about 2 miles from reaching the American Museum of Natural History's Southwest Research Station. The distance seems small to me (after seeing just what this fire did on the first day!), but the difference now is that the fire teams are in place and actively controlling the intensity and speed of the fire.

Fire map for May 16

Yesterday a team working in the Herb Martyr area found a more direct checkline that they can use to moderate the fire. Repellant has been laid, and preparations continue today to back the fire into the basin. A backing fire burns moderately, with mostly low flame height, and achieves a beneficial burn. A fire rushing uphill is much more extreme and can torch entire stands of trees. So the crews are backing fire into South Fork and into the main Cave Creek Canyon. So far, so good. If work goes as planned, the backburn from the research station area may be lit off tonight.

Today's major operations. Red dots are hotspots. Purple dots were hotspots, now cold.

Conditions remain very dry, and last night there was only a poor recovery of relative humidity, to about 15-16% overnight. It will be back in the single digits today. The fire behavior specialist exclaimed today that this fire continues to surprise him by the way it is following grass fuels, no matter what the wind does. This is anomalous behavior, due to the extreme dryness of fuels. Today's probability of ignition will range from around 80% when cloud cover is present, to 100% when the clouds burn off. (That is the measure of how likely a fire brand is to ignite more fire, should it land on fuel.) This anomalous behavior increases the risk to firefighters.

To the north, east, and south, the fire perimeter is holding very well and getting cold. The burn-out to Horseshoe Canyon road has been completed and the fire team is happy with how it went. Patrols check these areas regularly.

The black borders on this map are considered secure.

Most of the fire activity continues to be in the western region. Aerial ignition will continue along ridges in the vicinity of the fire's spread, to slow it by creating fires that back down the ridges to meet the main fire. Terrain in the high country is very difficult to work from the ground, so air operations are focused there. Snowshed Peak has burned, and the fire has not yet reached Chiricahua Peak.

Teams will be visiting Paradise today and evaluating the readiness of homes there, in case the fire gets away from us during the next high winds.

The statistics are these: 26,502 acres burned; 20% containment so far; 630 people working with the fire crews; and a total of $4.4 million spent so far.

A newspaper article which ran yesterday in a Tucson paper's online edition stated unequivocally that illegal immigrants started the Horseshoe Two fire. Apparently Border Patrol agents had tracked four illegal aliens to the point of origin of the fire. Much of the article was biased, but the assertion is correct that the fire was checked from burning into Portal on the first day by the large, heavily-grazed pasture of the Three Triangle Ranch, although the bulldozer line put in by the fire crew also was important. I walked part of the bulldozer line, and it is obvious that part of the fire stopped there.

My reporting on this blog is going to change after today. Alan and I are leaving for a trip to Eastern habitats. Raymond VanBuskirk will stay in our home while we are gone, and he, Peg Abbott, and Reed Peters will continue to attend the early morning briefings whenever possible, and send new information that I can post when internet connections allow. You will be treated to new perspectives on events here. I, however, won't have the same personal grasp on developments that comes from attending the meetings and observing firsthand how well a really skilled, professional fire team handles a crisis like this one. Together with my friends, we'll do our best to keep everyone informed.

Leaving right now is very difficult, yet I do need to get out of the smoke, and we have been planning to see faraway friends and family for some time. We are, at least, leaving the outcome in good hands.