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Arizona blaze out of control

Even as firefighters in Colorado made headway against the state’s largest forest fire, a monster blaze in eastern Arizona forced firefighters to flee and prompted evacuation warnings for thousands of people.

In Denver, Terry Barton, the U.S. Forest Service technician charged with setting the giant Colorado fire that has threatened the edge of metropolitan Denver and destroyed 95 buildings, pleaded not guilty. A judge set bail at $600,000, but Barton did not immediately post it.

Aided by favorable winds, lower temperatures and higher humidity, firefighters tackling the Hayman fire southwest of Denver kept it at bay Thursday. The fire has burned 136,000 acres.

“We feel like we’re finally getting a handle on this,” Forest Service spokesman Kevin Riordan said. “But that could change quickly.”

The Hayman fire was 40 percent contained Thursday, but officials indicated that more of the blaze would be under control by Friday morning.

The news was more discouraging in southwest Colorado, where the Missionary Ridge fire had burned 58,000 acres near Durango. More than 30 homes have been destroyed and 400 more were threatened.

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman visited the work center near the Hayman fire Thursday night and announced that President Bush had authorized $120 million to fight wildfires in the West. The cost of fighting the Hayman fire alone has reached $16 million.

Veneman also announced a new program in which Forest Service firefighters would train municipal colleagues to battle wildfires. She said the training may begin as early as next week.

The news in Arizona about 100 miles northeast of Phoenix was not encouraging as the Rodeo fire raged out of control, with temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees.

The fire roared through the upscale vacation community of Pinedale, but the extent of the damage was unclear. Navajo County Manager Eddie Koury said his staff had seen at least five homes on fire.

At Mother Nature’s mercy

Virtually all 390 residents of Pinedale had fled a day earlier, and fire crews had to pull back because the fire was too dangerous.

“We’re at the mercy of Mother Nature right now,” said Larry Humphrey, the incident fire commander. “There’s not a whole lot we can do with it.”

The Arizona fire has charred 85,000 acres since it began Tuesday and has forced more than 4,000 people to flee their homes in Pinedale, Linden and Clay Springs.

Another blaze burning across 2,600 acres of the Ft. Apache Indian Reservation forced the evacuation Thursday night of about 4,000 residents in the communities of Heber-Overgaard and Aripine, said fire spokeswoman Chadeen Palmer. That blaze began as a signal fire started by a lost hiker.

Residents of Show Low, a town of 7,700 east of Pinedale, and another 3,500 people in neighboring Pinetop-Lakeside were told to be ready to evacuate on an hour’s notice.

Marilyn Price, the fire chief in Linden, said her department had to pull crews out of Pinedale because the Rodeo fire was “so fast and so hot.” A department spokesman said firefighters would not be able to save a 500-home neighborhood because the houses are made of wood and there was too much surrounding fuel.

Residents devastated

At an evacuation center 60 miles away, Pinedale residents wept as they were told the bad news. Also sobbing was Lana Rexroat, a mother of four who is expecting another child in six weeks, after learning the blaze was within 3 miles of her home in Clay Springs. “I want to have a home to take my baby to in six weeks,” she said.

During Veneman’s visit to the Hayman fire in Colorado, she underscored the Bush administration’s emphasis on thinning national forests and trimming underbrush to control wildfires, a divisive issue in the West.

“I don’t see this as being driven by one side or another,” Veneman said. “I see it being driven by what’s in everybody’s best interest.”

At the court hearing in Denver, Barton, 38, cried at times and smiled to acknowledge a parade of friends who testified as character witnesses.

A federal grand jury Wednesday charged the 18-year Forest Service veteran with setting fire to timber in a national forest, damaging federal property, injuring a firefighter and using fire to commit a felony.

The indictment came after prosecutors expressed doubt about Barton’s story that she accidentally started the fire while burning a letter from her estranged husband.