Museum Fire: Flagstaff residents remain hopeful, prepare for the worst

Jul. 22--Ash wafted onto the frayed brim of Chuck Price's ball hat. He didn't bother to brush it off, preoccupied as he was watching the hulking, chest-reverberating Chinook helicopter dip its water pouch into the North Reservoir and soar off on another sortie to fight the fast-encroaching Museum Fire.

"Well," he said, holding a box containing some possessions in the driveway of his home near the corner of Schultz Pass and Mount Elden Lookout roads, "you see this on TV all the time. You never think it's you who's going to be doing the evacuating."

As 6 p.m. and the deadline for mandatory evacuations fast approached for those who live in this upscale passel of homes hugging the forest, Price still found time to take in the scene. Most of his neighbors had already cleared out, per Coconino County orders.

Some looked as if they had left in a hurry, bikes strewn in driveways and a few garage doors left open. The smoke, eye-stinging and lung-constricting, cast a pall over the area, twilight coming incongruously early on this night. The dominant sounds was the thump-thump of the Chinook and the occasional blare of sirens from nearby police and fire officials.

"I'm about ready," Price said. "My wife's working down in Cottonwood. I'm going to my sister's place in Williams. Too hot in Cottonwood. Got some files and some guns, some pictures and my passport. The rest of the stuff, we can replace."

For Price and many other Flagstaff residents, the Museum Fire, fueled by shifting, unpredictable winds, has caused much anxiety and no small amounts of fear in residents.

Though only three areas surrounding Flagstaff faced evacuation notices -- to allow firefighters to do back-burns to protect their homes -- more than a dozen neighborhoods in the city and county were under so-called "pre-evacuation" orders, set to leave at a moment's notice. Great swaths of the city were affected, from rural Silver Saddle way north off Highway 89 to the relatively suburban Upper Greenlaw neighborhood.

Those facing evacuation, however, seemed accepting and even a bit heartened by the notice. That's because they felt the reason for the notice to leave was preventative more than reactive.

"I think it's a smart thing, what they're doing," said Alan Adams, a Schultz Pass Road homeowner who gently placed the carrier holding his cat, Tinkerbell, into the passenger seat of the truck. "That back-burn's going to help us. This is no big deal. My guess: We'll be right back here by this time tomorrow."

Mark and Mary Frost, and their son Kenneth, had been monitoring the situation all day. By early afternoon, when the winds shifted back toward the west, "we knew we'd get the (evacuation) notice. We had our 72-hour kit prepared, but we had to update it to make sure our clothes still fit."

In sectors of the city less immediately in the fire's sights as Schultz Pass and Mt. Elden Lookout roads, reactions from people who live close enough to see flames and billowing smoke had similar

Eyes darting up-mountain, Gina Darlington stepped onto the front stoop of her home in the Silver Saddle neighborhood just west of Highway 89 and assessed the miasma of smoke swirling overhead.

She saw dark plumes at the top of the ridge of a flank of Mount Elden, mingling with the more prominent gray smoke wafting down.

"I don't know the difference in colors," she said. "Black? Is that bad? I just keep watching my news feed telling me what to do."

Reaction from her neighbors on Sunset Drive ranged from the grim acceptance that comes from living on the cusp of the forest to legitimate worry that, despite possessing fire insurance, they might lose all their possessions, all their memories and be forced to start anew, like so many affected by wildfires in the West.

Then there were Carolyn Sieg and Ralph Rodgers, who lived at the far west end of the Sunset Drive, their backyard abutting forest land. Despite the troubling sight of smoke, and its acrid stench, the two laughed when asked if they had packed. They said they felt confident that the Museum Fire would abate and not jump the ridge and threaten their home. Sieg, a fire ecologist for the Rocky Mountain Research Station and longtime Flagstaff resident, said she called "my Forest Service buddies" and was reassured.

"But I can pack pretty quickly," she said. "We can get the dogs out and we thought about what to take. We just haven't packed yet."

Perhaps a reason for cautious optimism among some residents in the Silver Saddle neighborhood is that many of these residents are veterans of the 2010 Schultz Fire, which scorched 15,000 acres, including the hills just to the north of where the Museum Fire is blazing.

Brandon Smith, who lives with his parents two doors down from Darlington on Sunset Drive, looked toward the hazy horizon and said -- so far, at least -- it paled compared to the devastation wrought by the Schultz Fire, which barely spared his neighborhood.

"I'm not as worried now as then with the Schultz," he said. "That one, like, we were moving. We got out of there. Now? We've got the trailers hooked up, got everything set, but we aren't leaving yet."

Sieg's recollection of the Schultz Fire is a little murky, but she recalls that "it started out pretty much the same." The difference, however, was that the Schultz Fire spread quickly. "But we still didn't have to leave," she said.

Less sanguine was neighbor Joan Pence, who moved to the neighborhood a year ago from the Valley and had yet to experience a wildfire. Visibly shaken, running a hand through her hair, she admitted the situation was "a little scary" and that she already evacuated her two horses. She tried to be philosophical, saying, "I guess that's the kind of risk you take when you move into the forest."

Smith, though praising firefighters' efforts, said blazes such as the Museum Fire are not inevitable and natural.

"Seventy-five years of mismanaged forest, this is what you get," he said, flashing anger. "It was even worse with the Schultz Fire."

Most declined to assess blame for the Museum Fire; they were more worried about their safety and the fate of their homes. Darlington had boxes lined up by her front door as early as 9 a.m.

"I'm just gathering pictures, mostly," Darlington said. "I saw a friend on Facebook and she said 'I'm kind of doing the Marie Kondo Method. I'm only taking what I've got to take.' I've been telling myself in my head, 'Well, maybe it's time for new stuff.' But I won't be thinking like that if I really do lose it, you know."

Similar pre-planning was taking place in the Christmas Tree neighborhood, where Katherine Murray and her three kids milled outside their Hollygreen Road home, directly in the flight path of the tankers. Murray said she has the kids, her dog Whisky and the carved bears she sells all ready to go should their "set" status change to "go."

"I know to be ready," she said. "I lived in San Diego when the Barona Fire (2015) came down to my backyard. Thank God, we got spared."

Preparation, apparently, won't help much for one of the few businesses off Highway 89 in the path of the fire. At the Horsemen Lodge restaurant, Trish Alvin, a co-owner, and Paul Guimond, the general manager, said it would take a huge effort to remove all the food and appliances at such short notice.

Alvin, who said ash and a few embers greeted her when she awoke Monday morning, ran a hand along the varnished oak bar, and said, "It'd be a shame if it burned down. There's a lot of wood in here."

"Yeah, a real tinderbox," Guimond added.

One family that planned to leave, post haste, was the Woody family, of Stuarts Draft, Va. They had been staying at the KOA Kampground off of Highway 89. They had seen the flames as they pulled their RV into its slot on Sunday evening, "but the staff here said they'd alert us if we needed to evacuate," patriarch Jeremy Woody said.

The Woodys left early Monday afternoon for the final stop on their two-week summer vacation: Sedona.

"Flagstaff is beautiful," Jeremy said. "This is unfortunate."

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