After spending two nights in a shelter for people evacuated from a raging Arizona wildfire, Tracey McCabe was looking forward Thursday to sleeping in her own bed after authorities lifted some evacuation orders and said improving weather conditions were helping them fight the fire.
McCabe was among several hundred residents in the town of Mayer, population 1,400, allowed to return home after fire officials determined their homes were no longer at risk from a blaze that started Saturday and has burned 39 square miles (101 square kilometers).
She was worried that her house might have had an orange tag placed on it by authorities to mark that residents had been evacuated away from the fire zone.
“That means you’re not there. It’s an open invitation to thieves,” she said.
But thousands of Arizona residents from other nearby towns were still under evacuation orders, among them about 1,400 children from a summer camp. Handfuls in in other states were also forced to leave as a growing spate of wildfires was fanned by hot and windy weather. Firefighters on Thursday were also battling wildfires in California, New Mexico, Utah and Washington state.
The Arizona blaze about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Phoenix grew slightly overnight but fire officials said firefighters had contained 25 to 30 percent of the perimeter and that lower wind speeds would make it easier for firefighters to try to quell it.
Higher humidity also helped firefighters on Wednesday despite a temporary halt to aircraft operations because of an unauthorized drone in the area. Several helicopters and fire crews had to stop working for about 45 minutes to an hour because the drone posed a serious safety hazard. Authorities did not find the pilot.
“Yesterday was very good day. We got that break in that weather. I’m feeling good,” said Todd Abel, Southwest Area Incident Management Team Operations Section chief.
More than 800 firefighters were battling the blaze burning in communities around Prescott, a small mountain city that draws a mix of desert dwellers escaping the heat, retirees and visitors to its famed Old West-themed Whiskey Row lined with bars.
About 3,400 people in the area have been affected by the fire and about 3,000 structures in evacuated areas were at risk but officials could not immediately provide details on how many were homes, Yavapai County spokesman David McAtee said Wednesday.
In the town of Dewey-Humboldt next to Mayer, David Eastlack, his girlfriend and their three daughters woke up Wednesday to find ash falling “like snowflakes” and a warning from authorities to prepare for a possible evacuation.
Eastlack was working at a warehouse later that morning when officials arrived and told workers to go home, get their families and leave the town of about 4,000 people. He raced home, loaded the family SUV with clothes and family pictures and headed for the evacuation center at a high school in the next town up the highway.
“We left everything else,” Eastlack said. “If it got destroyed in the fire, it’s just stuff. But we took the memories.”
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey visited the area and thanked firefighters Thursday after declaring a state of emergency in Yavapai County that directs $200,000 in emergency funds to fire suppression efforts and reimbursement for emergency response and recovery costs.
Ducey noted that Friday marks the 4-year anniversary of a wildfire that killed 19 elite firefighters in Yarnell, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) southwest of Prescott Valley.
He praised “the elite status of those young men that we lost. And I wanna take that same type of spirit out as we fight this fire over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.”
Elsewhere, hundreds of people forced from their homes by a southern Utah wildfire were expected return home even as the blaze grew.
Fire managers said Thursday at 25-mph (40-kph) wind gusts have pushed the wildfire near the ski resort town of Brian Head to more than 91 square miles (236 square kilometers), though firefighters have boosted containment to 15 percent. The fire was ignited by someone using a weed-burning torch.
In Southern California, a wildfire burning on the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base and in the city of San Clemente was about 10 percent contained. Officials there say higher humidity levels slowed the fire’s pace.
Fires that flared dangerously close to homes in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles and in the city of Burbank were knocked down.
California’s largest wildfire was burning on 10 square miles (26 square kilometers) in southern Riverside County.
And in central New Mexico, a fast-moving wildfire sparked by lightning grew to nearly 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) — burning grass and brush on privately owned land in Socorro County south of Albuquerque.
The plume of smoke could be seen by motorists on Interstate 25. Officials said that fire was 40 percent contained.
Galvan reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Clarice Silber and Josh Hoffner in Phoenix and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
