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“I’ve seen some exciting stuff, but not like this for a while,” he said. At night, the flames twinkled on the hill behind them like red stars in the sky. They kept sprinklers running outside, and Bill Velie bladed the edge of the forest a few times where it looked like the fire was crawling toward neighbors’ homes.
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He had thinned parts of the national forest on the other side of his property line, and he regularly mows the grass. More than anything, Bill Velie reassured them he had things under control. “Just like a bomb went off.”įirefighters encouraged them at least a handful of times to leave, and they agreed to if the winds shifted. “Boy, that made her jump,” Bill Velie said. They saw torched tumbleweeds fly across a major highway, flames tear through an old stone house and a propane tank burst. The couple watched neighbors load up horses and donkeys and haul them off. Polly Velie said she’s never been more scared, but the choice wasn’t difficult: “This is our house, and he’s my husband.” It’s the same decision the couple made in 2010 when another wildfire in the area forced evacuations. Her voice shrieked as she yelled above the smoke alarms going off throughout the house.īut Bill Velie - who cut fire lines with a dozer in multiple states for years - was intent on staying. She sped through embers and thick smoke to find her husband hosing down the driveway. Polly Velie rushed out of a physical therapy appointment when she learned her home was in the evacuation zone. Some who live in Girls Ranch had just minutes to react. Years of hotter and drier weather have the exacerbated blazes, leading them to frequently burn larger areas and for longer periods compared with previous decades. The blazes are among many this spring that forced panicked residents to make life-or-death, fight-or-flee snap decisions as wildfire season heats up in the U.S. Officials said the fire had grown to 162 square miles (419 square kilometers), but was still 30% contained. Officials said the blaze had damaged or destroyed 172 homes and at least 116 structures since it started April 6 and merged with another wildfire a week ago. as strong winds pushed it closer to the small city of Las Vegas.
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Flames licked the corner of one woman’s porch and destroyed two other homes, leaving a mosaic of charred land as the 30-square-mile (77 square-kilometer) fire finally neared full containment this weekend.Įlsewhere, firefighters in northern New Mexico on Sunday continued to battle the largest active wildfire in the U.S. The blaze that started Easter Sunday swept across vacant lots, scorched tree stumps and cast an orange glow on the parched landscape. Another raced to save animals on neighbors’ properties. (AP) - In a small enclave in northern Arizona where homes are nestled in a Ponderosa pine forest and tourists delight in camping, hiking and cruising on ATVs, high winds are nothing new.īut when those winds recently ramped up and sent what was a small wildfire racing toward their homes, residents in the close-knit Girls Ranch neighborhood near Flagstaff faced a dilemma: quickly grab what they could and flee, or stay behind and try to ward off the towering, erratic flames.