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CNN Live Today
Firefighters Keep Blaze From Destroying Show Low
Aired June 26, 2002 - 11:04 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Now at four after the hour, let's get to the Western firestorm.
Firefighters in Arizona are struggling this morning to keep a wall of fire out of the town of Show Low. So far, the strategy is working. But the big question is this morning is: can it hold?
Bill Delaney is one of the few people who's left in Show Low today. Let's check in with him and see how things are looking this hour.
Good morning, Bill.
BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Leon.
You know, they are starting to put words together here like cautious and optimism. Cautious optimism here that the fire lines will hold and this evacuated city of 8,000 will be spared from the wall of flame that was talked about.
Very good news here for awhile. Take a look at the house right across the street here. Now, we're quite restricted here in fire camp in Show Low. We can't walk any closer than this, but look at the white rag on the door, Leon. What that means is, this home has been evacuated. You see those white rags on virtually every home in this town.
And look in the backyard -- Greg, can try to push in there -- I think you can see a big pile of wood. Imagine if the fire had come in here. You see a lot of wood piles like that around Show Low. That would have been very bad news indeed.
Now what we're waiting for today, Leon, is to see whether the big smoke that we had yesterday, that big ceiling of smoke, emerges again. Right now the sky is actually quite clear. You're seeing a lot of blue up there. That's actually not good news. Fire officials like to see the smoke; the smoke keeps the temperature down. The temperature's down, the heat of the fire is down as well. That was a key factor in keeping what fire officials here say was their best day yet in this 8-day-old fire, yesterday.
Listen to the Jim Paxon of the National Fire Service.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JIM PAXON, NATIONAL FIRE SERVICE: The fire has been really benign the last few days. We've been able to get really close to it. And our containment is where fire went through first, in the Clay Springs, Pinedale, Leman area. That's cooled off. We're actually going in and mopping up. We not only have a line that's holding, but we're going in up to 150 feet and starting to extinguish burning materials.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DELANEY: Now, the wild card here is that a spark could fly off this still big fire. This fire that's still less than a mile outside of town. The spark could fly off over a blackened zone, that controlled burn yesterday that kept fire out of the western part of this city. A spark could fly over that western part into the unprotected southern part. If that were to happen, that could ignite a tree or a structure, and fire could move in from the south.
But officials here believe that that's unlikely today. They're less concerned about it today than they were yesterday. They're also concerned of freakish events like dry lightning from a kind of a freakish thunderstorm that could set something on fire.
But as I say, cautious optimism here finally. Though 30,000 people, of course, still evacuated from their homes with no prospect anytime soon of going back to them.
Back to you, Leon.
HARRIS: All right, Bill. Hey, listen. You said the smoke has cleared out, there's no smoke canopy there. But how about soot or ash? Is there any of that on everything? Because it looks to me like, from what we seeing from the camera shots, things do look pretty clean, for the time being, at least.
DELANEY: Things are remarkably clean here. We saw some ash, some cold ash coming down yesterday, but it was very sporadic. And as I look down on the ground here, well, you really -- you can see -- I don't know if you can see it on the camera -- there are some little speckles of ash here, that cold, white ash.
But no, we saw a little bit of that yesterday and, at the moment, things quite benign as we see a couple of the Silver City hot-shots heading out. Hundreds and hundreds of firefighters here still working 24 hours a day and, you know, they've really done a heroic job.
The fire is not in Show Low, well, partly because of luck and Mother Nature, but a huge part of it because of the hundreds of firefighters who have been out here working 12-hour shifts to keep this things under control -- Leon.
HARRIS: You got that exactly right. And they can't get enough credit for doing that.
Bill Delaney, thanks much, Bill. Be careful out there. We'll see you later on. DELANEY: Thanks, Leon.
HARRIS: All right. The Arizona inferno has chased some 30,000 people from their homes this month. So how are the fire refugees holding up this morning?
We sent our Jason Bellini out to find out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ELMER HINSELY: [to dog] No, you can't eat the microphone, no.
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Elmer Hinsely had to pack up and evacuate from Show Low, he made sure to take along his Coleman tent. His attitude: Why not turn this into a camping trip?
HINSELY: I've got two cockatiels; I've got one dog, one cat and two fish.
BELLINI: And one wife?
HINSELY: And one wife.
BELLINI: If he, his wife, cat, dog, and fish were alone in their attitude...
HINSELY: [pointing to bird cage] That's Elvis on that side.
BELLINI: If others didn't take the same: let's make the best of this approach, there wouldn't be this state fair-like atmosphere at the largest fire evacuee facility in Arizona. This high school in Eager, Arizona, has -- yes, its own dome football field. Cot communities are taking shape on the field. The kids at camp 32-yard- line seem to get how irony and self-deprecation work.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's the living room, and here's the side room, where we keep the entertainment system.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, there's my room.
BELLINI: The entertainment system? What's the entertainment system?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The entertainment system is a CD player and speakers.
BELLINI: These examples of people who are making an adventure of this evacuation are not to take away from the very real sadness and very real tragedy of people who, some cases, have lost everything. Some find this dislocation more disorienting than others.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The only one that is really noticing it is the oldest one there, Todd. It's kind of getting with him today. He's been crying a little bit. But the younger ones just think we're just on vacation, I think. BELLINI: If people here feel awkward having fun amongst people facing what is for some, devastating loss, they don't show it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We know that a lot of people have lost their homes, and we know a lot of people need all the help they can get. But it's our way of just -- if we keep our minds positive, you know, things are going to happen right.
BELLINI: Some even admit they're enjoying the chance to make new friends, meet new people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's the Gameboy freak.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who are you?
BELLINI (on camera): You're the Gameboy freak?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
BELLINI: I'm Jason.
Two twins. 80 years old.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALES: One.
BELLINI (voice-over): Some salt-of-the-earth individuals are taking it all with a grain of salt.
(on camera): How is tonight different then if you were at home?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we would have played cards this afternoon, probably.
BELLINI: If you were at home?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
BELLINI: Instead, you're playing them tonight?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that would be one of the big differences.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [to dog] Bubba, you don't need to eat her food.
BELLINI: Your dog's name is Bubba?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, that's what I call him.
BELLINI (voice-over): For people like Elmer, making the best of a bad situation means turning an intolerable circumstance into a tolerable adventure.
Jason Bellini, CNN, Eager, Arizona.
(END VIDEOTAPE) HARRIS: There's something about the human spirit that just won't go down.
For more on the firestorm in the West, just visit our Web site for all the maps, photo galleries, and continual updates you'll need. The address there is CNN.com. AOL keyword, of course, is CNN.
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