Low winds favor crews battling Sedona blaze (updated 6 p.m.)

The fire, which has grown to more than 3,000 acres, backed down the red rock peak towering behind the Slide Rock State Park parking lot Thursday morning as a Big Bear, California, hot shot crew patrolled a break cut in the grass, weeds and brush, making sure the flames didn't move any closer to the highway and creek.

They were just one of the elite hot shot crews working to contain the fire in an area along Sterling Canyon where the fire made its furthest advance Wednesday. “They’re going to try to hold it at where it jumped” the line, said David Eaker, a spokesman for the team fighting the fire.

If that doesn’t work, they will be forced to fall back again for another try, he said. But the line had held as of Thursday afternoon.

Crews were also still standing by to protect roughly 430 homes and 30 businesses in Oak Creek Canyon, which was evacuated when the fire began Sunday as a transient’s campfire. No buildings have burned, and Eaker said “it’s looking pretty good in that area right now.”

Crews are using a two-lane highway that runs through the middle of Oak Creek Canyon to contain the fire on its eastern flank.

Eaker said Thursday’s low winds worked in the favor of the 700 firefighters on the blaze. But temperatures forecast around 100 with single-digit humidity would work against them.

The concern all along the winding canyon two-lane north of Sedona, was that a hot burning fire which would ignite mature Ponderosa Pines and send embers across the highway and Oak Creek and race up the other side of the canyon.

As the crews tidied up the break late Thursday, the slow-burning fire in the grass and shrubs ignited two large Ponderosas' lower trunks and limbs, but died out within 20 minutes.

As long as the flames don’t spread to the tops of the tall trees, there’s little worry over the fire jumping the road and creek, said Tony Demasters, a division supervisor for the Brins Fire Incident Command Team.

If that were to happen, the fire would probably increase its size much more quickly, racing up the other side of Oak Creek Canyon unchecked.

Fire moves much more quickly uphill than down because rising heat from flames that pre-heat the plants — fuel — above, said Charlie Jankiewicz, an incident command information officer.

He said the Ponderosas are extremely fire-resistant, able to recover even after their trunks are scorched. He said the lower boughs would likely turn brown and fall off, but trees would probably recover unless they burned to the very top.

"A year from now you're going to come in and it's going to look pretty much the way it did," said Demasters.

The old apple and pear tree orchards around the Slide Creek grounds have been spared, so far, as has the old Brown House, built in 1926.

The slow fire near the park was good for some animals, very bad for others. While the fire crept down the steep slopes behind the park, a large red tail hawk dived and scooped up a small animal, but dropped it.

Jankiewicz said burrowing animals often can't flee the flames in a hot fire, but he said large animals — deer, elk and bear — often come back into burned areas as soon as the ground cools to get nutrients, including salt, in the ashes.

But while the fire was under control on the west side of the highway, it was giving fire fighters ahard time in Sterling Canyon.

Heavy air tankers returned Thursday morning, the first time since Sunday, in an effort to check the fire's progress north of Sterling Canyon, east-west gorge that meets Oak Creek just north of Slide Rock.

A lead plane, a small twin-engine plane, would scout the fire line, its crew talking with fire fighters by radio to identify the area where they wanted fire retardant dropped.

Then the lead plane would make another pass, indicating the route and target for the heavy four-engine slurry bomber following.

Two heavy tankers and a huge Sky Crane helicopter dropped load after load of fire retardant to help the ground crews in Sterling Canyon.

Jankiewicz said slurry is not a substitute for work on the ground. He said it merely slows the fire's progress so ground crews to give ground crews enough time to remove fuel in the path of the fire. In the parking lot, tanker contractor Dan Sullivan of Prescott pumped water to an Avra Valley Fire Department engine manned by Chris Ader, an engine boss with theAvra Valley Fire Department.

Ader said the department got the call to help Monday and sent up a four-man crew. Engines and crews from several Arizona fire departments were stationed next to or behind homes and businesses along the canyon, assigned to protect the buildings by setting up sprinkler systems and cutting trees next to the houses.

So far, no buildings have burned in the Brins Fire, which is thought to have started at transient camp near Wilson Mountain Sunday. Police continue to investigate, but no arrests have been made.

The Brins Fire was estimated to be about 3,000 acres but has jumped Sterling Canyon and could roughly double in size as it moves to the edge of the next planned containment line.

U.S. Forest Service officials can't predict when Oak Creek Canyon residents will be allowed to return to their homes and businesses. But Forest Service officials said Wednesday night that crews could be working the fire for several weeks.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.