PHOENIX — A brush fire is burning in Yarnell, and officials are calling for voluntary evacuations in the area.
The Tenderfoot Fire is burning on the east side of the town, according to Yavapai County Sheriff's Deputy Dwight D'Evelyn.
Yarnell was the scene of one of the deadliest wildfires in history, the Yarnell Hill Fire in 2013.
The Wednesday fire forced the closure of SR 89A between Yarnell and Peeples Valley, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation.
Not all details about the fire were immediately clear, but the Southwest Fire Intelligence Center reported about 5:45 p.m. MT Wednesday that the fire had grown to at least 300 acres.
Local fire agencies, along with the U.S. Forest Service, were responding to the fire.
“This is priority one right now — the top priority in the state,” said Dolores Garcia, a wildfire spokeswoman for the BLM. “We do have structures threatened, and evacuations are in progress. …We’re just trying to get as much as we can there in terms of resources.”
Garcia said the fire is less than a mile southeast of Yarnell and moving rapidly. She said it is being pushed by winds up to 15 mph and is burning rapidly through a chaparral area that was not consumed during the fatal blaze of 2013.
There were reports of structures burning, but Garcia said those have been unconfirmed.
The fire appears to be burning moving northeast, burning up slopes just east and away from the town, on the opposite side of SR 89, although the fire's western flank was still threatening Yarnell. A photo showed flames moving up Y Mountain, just beyond a monument that was established in honor of the firefighters who died in 2013.
Garcia said aircraft, ground crews and engines are moving to attack the fire. That includes firefighters from Yarnell, Congress, Peeples Valley, BLM and U.S. Forest Service. Fire administrators reported that a heavy-air tanker, two single-engine air tankers and a trio of elite "type-1" wildland fire crews were ordered for the blaze early Wednesday evening.
Garcia said conditions in central Arizona are extremely dry with high fire danger.
Garcia said the cause of the fire is under investigation, but she noted there was no lightning in the area Wednesday.
Yarnell resident Vanessa Purdy said she noticed smoke from the fire about 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday and then received a voluntary evacuation notice on her cellphone.
Purdy lost her home and a neighboring rental home in the 2013 fire.
She scrambled to pack up her belongings Wednesday afternoon as she spoke to The Arizona Republic on the telephone.
“I’m a little smarter on what to grab,” this time, she said. “I’m just shivering on the inside. There’s definitely some lingering PTSD from the last time.”
APS reported that more than 1,000 customers in Yarnell were without power Wednesday evening.
American Red Cross volunteers were working to open an evacuation center by 6 p.m. at Yavapai College, 1100 E. Sheldon St., in Prescott.
On June 28, 2013, a lightning storm ignited the Yarnell Hill Fire in the high desert northwest of Phoenix. Two days later, the brush fire that covered a few hundred acres exploded across 13 square miles.
Hundreds of people fled from Yarnell, Glen Ilah and Peeples Valley as flames destroyed 127 homes.
The Granite Mountain Hotshots, who had been hand-cutting firebreaks along the blaze's flank, descended from a mountain ridge into a bowl where they became trapped. The 19 men deployed protective shelters but all were overcome by a wall of fire so hot it fractured boulders.
Memorials for the fallen firefighters played out for months, and questions about what went wrong that day have lingered in the years since.
