PRESCOTT, ARIZ, July 4: Firefighters yesterday tightened their grip on a blaze in Arizona that killed 19 of their comrades days earlier in the deadliest US wildfire tragedy in 80 years, and officials said they feared more bodies may be found during mop-up operations.
Strong, erratic winds that whipped the so-called Yarnell Hills fire into a deadly frenzy over the weekend abated for a second day, helping crews make headway in subduing the flames, officials for the firefighting command team told Reuters.
As of Wednesday morning, a force of nearly 600 firefighters had managed to achieve their first measure of solid enclosure around the fire’s perimeter, estimated at 8 percent, they said. Containment was expanded to 45 percent later in the day.
Authorities also reported that 114 buildings had been confirmed as destroyed in and around the tiny central Arizona town of Yarnell, about (130 km) northwest of Phoenix. Earlier estimates of property losses varied from 50 to 200 structures.
From the air, extensive fire damage was visible in the western outskirts of Yarnell, but the center of town looked relatively untouched.
The blaze has blackened some 8,400 acres (3,400 hectares) of rugged, brush-covered hillsides and ravines since it was ignited on Friday by lightning.
Officials said they could not rule out the possibility that more people had died in the blaze, possibly residents who had refused to heed evacuation orders at the peak of the fire on Sunday afternoon.
“This fire moved approximately 6.4 km in 20 minutes,” Yavapai County Sheriff Chief Deputy John Russell told Reuters. “We had already started evacuating everyone … And we experienced people who were not going to leave.”
“When we say we have a concern, it’s because someone looks at you in the eye and says, ‘I’m not leaving, this is my home, I’m going to protect it,’ so we go to the next one,” he said.
Russell said search teams would begin combing through debris of gutted homes in the next few days, after the area was secured by utility crews.
“Over the next week, we are going to be going through the properties affected by this fire, just looking for victims. We don’t have information that there are any, but it’s something that we are concerned about,” Russell said. (agencies)
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