THE FLORIDA FIRE - IMPACT DETAILs.

BY George West

The Florida Fire started on July 7, 2005 with a lightning strike on Florida Peak. It eventually spread across the ridge line of the Santa Rita Mountains above Madera Canyon and was declared 100% contained on July 21 when residents were allowed to return to their homes. This story gives a detailed summary of the areas that were burned and those not burned in the fire.

Although the maps of the Florida Fire show the impacted area as a solid 23,000+ acres burned, the actual acreage burned is far less. The fire was greatest on the ridge of the Santa Ritas and on the east side. Most of the burn on the west side was in a mosaic of burned, partly burned, and unburned acreage.  The entire area in the center of Madera Canyon where the road runs from the welcome station below Proctor to the upper Trailhead parking area is untouched by the fire. The only evidence is the back-burn along the east side of the road above Proctor that ends at the road to the Bog Springs campground. If one looks closely, you can see that some of the brush and overhanging trees have been cleared around the residential areas. Much of the back-burned areas in the canyon itself are bright green with new grass and other vegetation.

There is no fire damage in the Agua Caliente Saddle or anywhere on the west side of Madera Canyon. The fire never got to the floor of Madera Canyon or within a mile of the Trailhead Parking area. On the west-facing slopes of the Santa Ritas, there is more green than blackened and completely burned area; the largest burned area is on the southwest slope of Mt. Wrightson south of Josephine Saddle. The second largest area is a triangular-shaped drainage above Bog Springs. Otherwise there are several black areas in the forest of about one to five acres in size. Most of the black areas are up high near the crest of the mountain range. The areas where the ground cover was burned but the trees were not are brown in color leaving most of the oak and pine trees alive. Here, an estimate can be made that the black areas are 10%, the brown areas 20-25%, and the balance still green. The west face of Josephine Peak was heavily burned.

There was no fire in the area from Agua Caliente Saddle to Josephine Saddle along the eastern slope of Mt. Hopkins except from about one-half mile west of Josephine Saddle to the saddle where fire damage was limited to just a few feet off of the ground. From Josephine Saddle towards Baldy Saddle are areas alternating between no fire to light and moderate fire damage that burned fuel on the ground and up to four feet in the small trees. Just below Bellows Spring are a few one- to three-acre patches of black, burned forest.  Bellows Spring is totally in the green area and from there all the way to Baldy Saddle there are more green areas than brown.

The small area of Baldy Saddle was untouched by the fire. There are black areas to the north and south and especially to the east down the east slope of the Santa Ritas. On the trail towards the summit of Mt. Wrightson is a small grove of Douglas fir trees, most of which were burned but a few survived. Thereafter is a black zone where everything had burned, even the largest trees. Whole trees and downed logs in this area were totally consumed with no ash remaining. This black zone lasts until just before the rocky area on Mt. Wrightson.

From Baldy Saddle north along the ridgeline and on the east side of the Santa Ritas for several miles are no brown areas; everything is either black or green. Large black streaks come up the side of the mountain usually in the drainages. Between Baldy Saddle and Armour Spring the vegetation alternates black areas 100-200 yards wide with strips of green.  

Pine Saddle can be seen from Green Valley.  It is the triangular-shaped area of tan color on the ridge a mile or more north of Baldy Saddle. The tan is grassland that replaced a forest burned here in 1992. About half of the burned area of Pine Saddle burned again. Pine Saddle is a good example of how slowly the pine forest regenerates in the sky islands. The earlier fire covered about 40 acres. In the 13 years since that fire the land has grown a lot of grass and number of bushes, but only about two dozen new pine trees that have now burned.

The worst fire damage is near the crest. Burned areas extend down the slopes one half-mile or more, but the lower burns are not as wide as those near the crest. North of Pine Saddle are some areas that suffered only ground fires where all the low brush is burned and some of the trees were saved. The fire started on Florida Peak with a lightning strike on the east side of that mountain. However, Florida Peak has less fire damage than many other areas. The top of the peak is still green. There are a number of black and brown patches on the lower slopes but they are all small as if spot fires had started and then died out.

Florida Canyon is a north-facing canyon that empties out near the University of Arizona’s Florida Work Station just off Box Canyon Road. This canyon is cooler and wetter than most canyons in the mountains.  Here a relict forest of Douglas fir trees has survived while the rest of Arizona dried out over the centuries.  Some of the trees here are huge with a DBH of over 12 feet and a height of 50 feet or more. The upper end of Florida Canyon is bowl-shaped like a cirque. The entire bowl had burst into a firestorm, which blackened everything. This was the source of one of the biggest plumes of smoke that could be seen towering above the mountains in the early days of the fire. Nothing remains there but charred tree skeletons.

Although the fire burned many trees between Florida Peak and Florida Saddle, the larger trees will probably survive. At Florida Saddle, some trees were cut to make a fire break that did not hold. Below Florida Saddle are areas that only had a ground fire and almost all the trees are safe.  There are many round holes 12 to 30 inches in diameter in the ground, often with tunnels three to six inches in diameter radiating out from them. Entire trees had been consumed by the fire to the point that even the underground portion of the trees burned, even the roots.

Below Florida Saddle there is much evidence of ground fire but most of the still-standing large fir trees will probably survive except in one small area where the fire burned all the way to their 50-foot tops. In the middle of Florida Canyon are several large 24-inch diameter fir trees that had toppled to the ground with all their branches and green needles still intact.  Here the ground fire burned the trunk in half at ground level and the tree fell. In the lower half of the Douglas fir grove only a few of the trees burned but all had been stressed by the heat of ground fire. Due to stress, the firs dropped many of their needles and the ground is covered with a thick carpet of needles.

Farther down Florida Canyon is the oak forest. There is another bowl-shaped drainage to the north along the main ridge of the Santa Ritas that was a fire hot-spot and is totally burned. Below is a large area of oak that is destroyed. The now much lower crest of the Santa Ritas is black from the streambed to the crest for more than one half mile and all the area is black. One black area is more than one square mile and is the largest single area of total black that can be seen from Box Canyon Road. Near the mouth of the canyon the fire went right to the fence surrounding the Florida Work Station, just yards from some of the buildings.  On the west side the fire actually went past the station on out to the mouth of the canyon.

Summary: The fire was much worse on the east slope than on the west. The fire has left a mosaic of burned and unburned areas with approximately the following ratio: black, totally burned areas - 20-25%, brown areas of only ground fires - 30-40%, and green unburned areas - 35-40% with more green on the west than on the east side.

 

Some of the above information was presented by the Forest Service at a Fire Forum sponsored by FOMC on August 5, 2005 in Green Valley. About 300 people attended the program that began at 9:00 AM with introductions of the participants by FOMC President Luis Calvo and Forest Service Information Officer Gail Aschenbrenner. Attending the forum from the Forest Service were: Bob Lefevre, Hydrologist and Coordinator of the Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team, Keith Graves, Nogales District Ranger, Don Marion, Madera Canyon Manager, Saluk Shafiqullah, Hydrologist, Sarah Davis, and Laura White. From the Friends of Madera Canyon were Doug Moore, Naturalist and Author, and George West, Ornithologist with the Hummingbird Monitoring Network.

Gail Aschenbrenner gave a brief history of the Florida Fire and showed slides of the fire, the crews working the fire, and crews rehabilitating forest land after other fires in nearby sky islands. Bob Lefevre presented information on how the BAER program functions to respond after fires, what issues are addressed, what things they can do within the BAER budget constraints and what they cannot do. Laura White spoke about rehabilitation efforts on the Aspen fire on Mt Lemmon. Keith Graves spoke about the need for considerable time to clear trails and make the area safe for hikers. Don Marion outlined the trails that were open and those that were closed at this time. The Vault Mine Trail, Agua Caliente Trail, the Nature Trail, and all picnic areas and the campground within the Madera Canyon Recreation Area are open. Trails such as the Super Trail and Old Baldy Trail remain closed until crews can remove hazards. They cautioned hikers not to go on closed trails as there would be serious legal consequences.

George West gave a short presentation on the Hummingbird Monitoring Network’s program at the Chuparosa Inn in Madera Canyon and how this work provided a baseline for impacts such as fire.

President Calvo presented District Ranger Graves with a plaque thanking the Forest Service for their hard work on the Florida Fire and in protecting the residences in the canyon and the recreation area.

President Calvo then presented Canyon Manager Marion with a framed photograph of Don working on the fire – with the mat signed by all residents of the canyon – thanking him for his efforts on the fire and for the rapid repair of water lines to many residences.

Members of the audience asked many questions of the Forest Service, focusing primarily on the status of trails, specific forest areas, and wildlife. Ranger Graves thought that hikers would once again be able to reach the summit of Mt. Wrightson sometime next summer if all goes well. Everyone believed that wildlife was little damaged by the fire because most animals could flee the burning areas into adjacent areas that did not burn. The only animals that would have suffered would be aquatics such as frogs or fish, neither of which was found in the canyon.

Members of the board and FOMC volunteers staffed the Friends’ display booth, passed out membership applications and brochures, and served prickly pear cactus lemonade and cake to guests.

CAUTION – Do Not Enter any trail or area that is marked with a CLOSED sign. These areas can be extremely dangerous from falling trees and tree branches, unstable rock and trail surfaces, trail washouts from monsoon rains, and sudden flooding of dry creeks after rain storms. The Forest Service will be patrolling the area and will issue citations to anyone found in closed areas. The Forest Service will ask for volunteers to help repair damage to the trails when needed. For more information on the status of the post-fire program, check out the Coronado National Forest web site at:  www.fs.fed.us/r3/coronado/florida/

 

Mosaic of heavily burned and unburned areas along the north side of Florida Peak south of the road leading into the U of AZ Experiment Station Headquarters. Photo by George West.

Next Article: Update and Report

The Florida Fire is proclaimed to be “out,” although there are still some smoldering spots on the mountainside high up above the Kent Spring Center. As one approaches the canyon, there is obvious evidence of back burns all along the east side of Madera Canyon Road from the last one-way bridge to the mouth of the canyon. Once you have passed the Bog Springs Campground turnoff, you do not see any more evidence of fire along the road. However, if you scan the hillsides and up to the top of the ridge with binoculars, you can see where the fire was and how it moved from north to south from Florida Peak to Mt. Wrightson, Josephine Saddle, and on toward Mt. Hopkins. The only lower-down evidence I could see was a cleared fire-line that curls up the hill in front of you as you drive up the road past the Madera Kubo cabins towards the one-way bridges before the Chuparosa Inn.

Hundreds of feet of the water line supplying many residences were damaged and had to be replaced. Don Marion, USFS Madera Canyon Manager and his crew worked all day Saturday, July 23, to restore the water line start the flow of water into the large storage tank.

The Super and Old Baldy Trails are closed while the FS checks out safety issues on the trails. There may be burned trees across the trails or standing burned trees that need to be cut down near the trail. Also, Don said that there has already been some wash of soil downhill that has obliterated some parts of some trails and these will have to be cleared away and the trail repaired. The Vault Mine Trail up the creek, Nature Trail, the Proctor to White House accessible trails, and the continuation of those trails up to Madera Canyon Lodge are open.

For a report on what comes next now that the fire is out, go to the "Update on FOMC Board of Directors Meetings" and click on the August 5, 2005 Board Meeting and Florida Fire Forum.

Fire break cut above the Trailhead Parking area.

 

Smoldering ash above the Kent Spring Center.  Note the rusty patch of fire retardant on the upper left peak and the black patches where trees were burned.

Back burn between Proctor and White House.

New seedlings already appearing in the back burned area.

Florida Peak where the fire started and burned upper hillsides from the UA Experimental Station Headquarters.

Patchy nature of the burn easily seen east of the UA Experimental Station Headquarters.

________________________________________

Madera Canyon Recreation Area Saved from the Florida Fire: July 22, 2005 by George West. The Florida Fire is now almost out. Most of the fire crews have left the tent and vehicle city on White House Canyon Road at the Continental School. The annual monsoon rains that finally came after an unusually long delay helped to knock the fire down. Type 3 fire crews doused the remainder of the blaze leaving only a few hot spots and smoldering tree trunks for the rest of the crew to watch until all signs of fire are out. The final total of acres burned is 23,183, but the crews were successful in keeping the fire away from all buildings and residences in the canyon. Observers were allowed up on Wednesday and home-owners came back to their homes in the canyon Thursday morning, July 21, two weeks after the fire started. The fire crews did a great job in keeping the fire away from structures and allowed the fire to burn the 100-year accumulation of fuel on the mountain sides of the Santa Ritas. We in the Friends of Madera Canyon are grateful to the some 1,000 fire fighters that subdued this blaze that could have devastated the canyon, its human habitations and wildlife residents, and the potential for near-future recreational and educational opportunities for thousands of local and visiting people. Our next step will be to work with the Forest Service to study the impact of the fire on the ecosystem and to pass that knowledge on to our visitors and students. Our immediate challenge is to control large-scale erosion of burned ground from washing into the creeks.

Florida Fire spread along the ridge and western side of the Santa Rita Mountains on July 14, 2005. Photo by Al Tozier

 

Florida Fire flare-ups on the eastern flank of the Santa Rita Mountains on July 10, 2005. Photo by Al Tozier

 

Tanker dropping fire retardant along the ridge of the Santa Rita Mountains on July 8, 2005. Photo by Al Tozier

Read Florida Fire Archived Articles

Return to Home Page

Return to News & Events Page