Arizona Fire is Now Record Setting

The Wallow Fire, which authorities suspect started from a small unattended campfire, has scorched dozens of homes and displaced as many as 10,000 people since it erupted May 29 in the White Mountains region, an area popular among Arizonans as a weekend getaway from the heat of summer.

The wind-whipped blaze has burned mostly in and around the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, about 150 miles east of Phoenix, churning through vast stretches of thick ponderosa pine.

Evacuation orders were lifted on Sunday for 7,000 to 8,000 residents forced to flee last week from two towns near the border with New Mexico, Springerville and Eagar.

But authorities have warned returning families that lingering smoke and soot in the air pose health risks for children and people with respiratory problems.

An estimated 1,900 additional people from several nearby towns evacuated in the first week of the blaze were notified on Monday night that it would probably be at least a few more days before they would be permitted to go back home.

While the blaze is far from being brought under control, fire managers said on Monday that they had turned a corner in their battle to curtail its advance toward populated areas.

"Nobody's really in the clear yet," U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Suzanne Flory said on Tuesday, but she added, "Overall, there's a sense of optimism."

Some 4,300 firefighters working around the clock have now carved containment lines around 18 percent of the fire's perimeter, mostly between its eastern flank and communities on either side of the Arizona-New Mexico line.

The New Mexico town of Luna, an enclave of about 200 people less than 10 miles east of the Arizona border, remains on alert for possible evacuation.

Controlled burns have been carried out on the outskirts of that town to remove tinder-dry brush and trees as potential fuel for advancing flames. But U.S. Forest Service officials say that so far the Wallow Fire itself has not crept into New Mexico.

The latest aerial infrared images of the fire on Tuesday show that 469,407 acres -- or about 733 square miles -- have burned overall, surpassing the 468,638 acres charred in 2002 by the Rodeo-Chediski Fire in eastern Arizona. That makes the Wallow Fire the largest on record in Arizona.

In terms of property losses, however, the Rodeo-Chidiski was far worse, destroying about 400 homes, Flory said.

Arizona Fire Now Heading to New Mexico

A total of 3,000 firefighters managed to contain a small slice of the massive Wallow Fire, but the inferno threatened today to cross the border into New Mexico.

Workers are using a DC-10 tanker air carrier from the sky and firebreaks on the ground in attempts to stop the blaze before it reaches the tiny town of Luna, N.M., seven miles from the Arizona border.

Incident Commander Joe Reinarz said Thursday that for the first time since the fire was sparked on May 29 firefighters were able to keep parts of it contained. As of Thursday, the fire had scorched more than 386,000 acres, with just 5 percent containment, according to the Associated Press.

"Saturday we can possibly look at getting the evacuees in Eagar, Springerville and Southfork back in their homes if the conditions are right over the next day and a half, two days," Reinarz said.

They are attempting to halt a repeat of the blaze that scorched Greer, Ariz., on Wednesday. New numbers released overnight revealed that 22 buildings -- many of them family homes -- in that town were destroyed.

Still in the fire's path are Paso Electric's high-voltage transmission lines, which supply electricity for hundreds of thousands of people. If these lines go, it may mean blackouts for many part of the region.

Alex Hoon, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told reporters that this fire is actually creating its own weather, forming a pyrocumulus cloud, or fire cloud, that is dynamically similar to a firestorm.

"The fire is so intense has so much heat that it actually forms its own thunderstorm at the top of the smoke plume," Hoon said.

These storms spur the fire on by creating winds that start new fires by hurling burning debris as far as five miles through the air. Near the New Mexico-Arizona state line, in the two small towns of Springerville and Eagar, residents were ordered out on Wednesday. Combined, the population of the two towns is approximately 8,000.