Gladiator Fire And Homes

Gladiator Fire And Homes, Hundreds of firefighters battled several Arizona wildfires on Monday night that have forced residents from their homes, destroyed several buildings and thousands of acres.

The fires have charred more than 5,000 acres of parched Ponderosa forest, brush and grassland over the weekend, consuming half a dozen buildings and threatening a small town, authorities said.

A human-caused fire in Crown King, a popular tourist destination 85 miles north of Phoenix, which has spread to over 1,300 acres since it started on Sunday has made 350 residents flee their homes and destroyed two buildings and one trailer.

An evacuation center was set up at a high school in nearby Mayer, Arizona, although only three people had taken shelter there on Monday, the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office said.

'Most residents have elected to stay,' spokesman Dwight D'Evelyn said. 'We're taking it hour by hour. Should (danger) become imminent, we'll get folks out quickly.'

Fanned by strong and erratic winds and dry weather, the ‘Gladiator Fire’ also threatened forest service campgrounds, lookout towers and power lines in the area, the forest service said in a statement.

'There is no containment on this fire ... there's homes up there (and) efforts have concentrated on structural protection at this point' said Debbie Maneely, a spokeswoman with the fire incident team.

By late afternoon on Monday, the blazes cast a haze of gray-brown smoke over parts of the northeast Phoenix valley.

The Sunflower Fire, the largest of at least four blazes in central and eastern Arizona, burned 3,100 acres in the Tonto National Forest, about 40 miles north of Phoenix, destroying two homes, a business and two outbuildings over the weekend, the Southwest Coordination Center said.

Authorities are still unsure what caused this fire, which was five per cent contained on Monday evening, according to the Incident Information System.

On the San Carlos Apache reservation, in eastern Arizona, the Elwood Fire, caused by lightning, charred more than 1,100 acres of Ponderosa pine, juniper and oak over the weekend.

The Bull Flat Fire on the Fort Apache reservation, meanwhile, burned 575 acres brush and grassland and threatened a fish hatchery.

It is feared that the hot and windy weather expected will make controlling the fires more difficult.

The blazes were the first major wildfires of the season in Arizona this year, after a record 2011 fire season in which nearly 2,000 recorded blazes together swallowed more than 1,500 square miles, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Last year's so-called Wallow Fire, the largest blaze in the state's history, started in late May and torched about 840 square miles of prime forest land in eastern Arizona.

Senator John McCain ignited a furor when he suggested last June that the blaze might have been started by illegal immigrants. Two Arizona cousins, later pleaded guilty to starting that fire when they left a campfire unattended.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2144575/Raging-Arizona-wildfires-force-hundreds-evacuate-5-000-acres-smoke.html#ixzz1v484uRKB