Eagar and Springerville are not forested and won't burn, officials predicted Tuesday night, as the Apache County sheriff issued an evacuation order for 3,000 residents of the south end of Eagar.
The Wallow Fire, now Arizona's second-largest at 311,481 acres and growing, may reach the two towns but it won't burn their homes and businesses, said Eagar Mayor Kim Holaway.
"I feel very good about this," said Holaway. "I'm comfortable."
Holaway, who retired to Eagar after a long career with the Marana School District, spoke by telephone just hours before being ordered from her own home.
Holaway estimated that 3,000 of Eagar's 4,885 residents were affected by the evacuation order for the area south of Arizona 260.
She said she trusts the force fighting the fire will continue its record of saving homes without losing lives.
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"I would not evacuate either community," said Steve Campbell, Navajo County director of the White Mountain Stewardship Project.
Campbell made his comments Tuesday morning, before the evacuation order was given.
The Wallow Fire has surprised him more than once with its ferocity, Campbell said, but Eagar and Springerville are easily defended.
The southern end of Eagar is partly in the forest, he said, but it has been thinned in the past few years, part of a stewardship project that harvested and burned undergrowth on 45,000 acres of forest in the White Mountains.
"Treatment" rings have already proved effective in Nutrioso and Alpine, making it possible to defend those two towns, which are higher in elevation and surrounded by conifers, he said.
Campbell said he visited Nutrioso after the fire and talked to the crews who defended it and nearby Alpine. They told him an approaching crown fire dropped to the ground when it hit the areas that had been thinned out.
Defense will be even easier on the wide, grassy plains of Round Valley, he said.
"Those are open communities," said Campbell. "There's no forest in those communities. It's not the same risk. You won't have crown-fire potential or big flame lengths.
"I still maintain a homeowner with a hose can knock out any spotting that occurs."
Campbell predicts that the fire, if it reaches the wooded, southern perimeter of Eagar, will drop out of the trees in the treated area and won't even burn down the hill into town.
The defensive line established by the thinning projects was reinforced Tuesday with bulldozer lines by the team fighting the fire, said Mayor Holaway.
The vegetation in the valley is grass, dotted with piñon and juniper, she said. "That does not burn as hot or as quickly as the tall conifers," she said.
The broad basin known as Round Valley sits at about 7,000 feet at the eastern edge of the 2 million-acre Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests.
Springerville, the older of the two, has about 2,000 residents; Eagar, just under 5,000.
The fire has now burned to within two miles of Eagar, Joe Reinarz, incident commander for the team fighting it, said at a community meeting Tuesday night at Round Valley High School. Reinarz agreed that the fire would be easier to stop in the grasslands.
"Grass moves really quick, but as soon as it stops … we can get right next to it and put it out."
He said the communities of Eagar and Springerville "appear to be defensible. I'm not giving you any guarantee, but we have a heckuva better chance once it gets down here in the grass," Reinarz said.
Reinarz said the evacuated alpine village of Greer had "a very good day" as the winds shifted to blow the fire north toward Eagar. "Right now, Greer's out of the gun sight," he said.
Contact reporter Tom Beal at tbeal@azstarnet.com or 573-4158.
