Exactly 20 years ago, The Rodeo-Chedeski Fire sounded a terrifying wakeup call.
We sat bolt upright in bed.
But when the smoke cleared – we hit the snooze button.
And have been pounding that button ever since.
The Rodeo-Chedeski started on June 18 of 2002, changing everything – and nothing — in the course of its three-week rampage. Public officials, politicians and homeowners swore to learn its grim lessons. The the two decades since that fiery monster finally died have been plagued by drought and an explosion of wildfires throughout the west. But the response by the Forest Service, local counties and cities and even property owners remains mostly fragmented and ineffectual.
Before the Rodeo-Chedeski – we thought the 28,000-acre, 1990 Dude Fire – which killed five firefighters – was a big fire. But then the Rodeo-Chedeski consumed 468,600 acres and 460 homes and came within one desperate backfire of engulfing Show Low and Pinetop.
Before the Rodeo-Chedeski – we thought burning a two million acres in the West in a single wildfire season was a bad year. But now 10-million-acre fire seasons have become routine.
Before the Rodeo-Chedeski — we thought the Forest Service could stamp out fires. But now, half the Forest Service budget goes to battling fires – and it’s not nearly enough.
Before the Rodeo-Chedeski — we thought we could tame wildfires by logging the forest. But a decade-long effort to log our way to safety has floundered – leaving forested communities tragically vulnerable.
Last weekend, Navajo County and communities throughout the White Mountains solemnly marked the 20th Anniversary of what was the largest wildfire in state history – at least until the Wallow Fire burned 538,000 acres in 2011.
The Rodeo Chedeski Fire unfolded like an apocalyptic disaster movie.
Out-of-work wildlands firefighter Leonard Gregg started the Rodeo fire near rodeo grounds near Cibecue on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation on June 18 – hoping to pick up some additional seasonal work. Tinder dry conditions and high winds spread the flames to 1,2000 acres the first day. Winds built to 25 miles an hour the second morning – increasing the size of of the fire four-fold. He ended up serving almost 10 years in prison.
A second fire started on the morning of June 20 near Chediski Peak east of Payson. Valinda Jo Elliott was stranded far from help when her quad died. She lit a fire to signal a TV news helicopter on its way to the Rodeo Fire. The wind grabbed the flames and in a few hours it spread to 2,000 acres. By the following morning, it had consumed 14,000 acres. She was ultimately fined $1,650 and ordered to pay $57 million in restitution to the White Mountain Apache Tribe.
The two fires eventually merged, exhibiting “extreme” fire behavior. Veteran firefighters said they’d never seen such flames, lashing out with 100-foot flame lengths engulfing centuries old ponderosa pines in a gulp. When the fire was still 50 miles away, the smoke made it hard to read street signs in Holbrook. through the smoke – although the fire was then 50 miles away.
The fire ultimately forced the evacuation of 30,000 people – including all of Show Low and Pinetop. The flames scorched an astonishing 732 square miles – so great an area that firefighters at one point feared it would advance on Payson as well. Rhode Island’s only a little bigger than the burn scar. Only a heroic effort by firefighters to use a backfire to create a buffer zone saved Show Low and Pinetop communities.
The fire burned so hot that many forested areas have not recovered even two decades later. Forest ecologists say the drought and the intensity of the new megafires may convert large expanses of ponderosa pine forest to pinyon-juniper and chaparral drylands.
The horror of the fire spawned fierce political battles – and promises to reform decades of Forest Service management decisions. Poorly managed grazing and logging compounded by a century of mindless fire suppression had increased tree densities in the ponderosa pine forests from 50 per acre to 1,000 per acre. A plague of wildfires was inevitable – even before the 20-year drought set in.
The initial responses seemed promising.
Congress Passed the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, which President George Bush signed in 2003.
The Forest Service consulted with local officials, environmentalists and loggers and launched the 4-Forests Restoration Initiative (4FRI), intended to restore 4 million acres of fire-prone Northern Arizona forests through a combination of small-tree logging and controlled burns.
The Apache Sitgreaves Forest teamed up with loggers and the timber industry to launch the White Mountains Stewardship Act – intended to create a small-log industry that could thin thousands of acres to protect forested communities from the holocaust everyone knew was now inevitable.
But the alarm – and the unity – didn’t last.
The Forest Service provided only a fraction of the subsidy promised to keep the White Mountains Stewardship Project alive. Instead of thinning 10,000 or 15,000 acres annually – the project averaged a few thousand. That helped save the communities of Springerville and Alpine from the Wallow Fire in 2011. But the Forest Service eventually abandoned that effort, convinced the much more ambitious 4FRI would thin the forest at no cost to taxpayers.
But that didn’t work out either. The Forest Service spent a decade trying to find a single contractor who could thin 50,000 acres a year. This required both creating a new, small-tree logging industry and figuring out how to make use of the wood scraps and saplings that represented half of the material in need of removal. But the 4FRI plan never penciled out, with a succession of contractors thinning a few thousand acres annually. The Arizona Corporation Commission dropped the mandate that had supported the state’s only biomass burning power plant and the promised large scale conversion of biomass into jet fuel or high-tech lumber never materialized. Last year, the Forest Service abandoned the original plan – but has still not found the money or the economic formula to come anywhere close to its original 50,000 annual target.
Local towns and counties mostly sat on their hands – assuming the Forest Service would save them. Repeated studies documented the danger facing communities surrounded by thick, fire-prone forests. Only a few communities in the Rim Country or White Mountains have adopted Firewise brush clearing codes, which can keep embers from a wildfire from setting neighborhood trees and brush on fire and then spreading through the underbrush from house to house. None have adopted WUI building codes, which use designs and materials to keep those ember storms from setting homes on fire – giving firefighters time and space to make a stand.
Unfortunately – the wildfires haven’t waited.
In the two decades before the Rodeo-Chedeski, US wildfires burned an average of about 3 million acres annually.
Since the Rodeo Chedeski, wildfires have burned an average of about 7 million annually, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
The federal government now spends something like $3 billion annually fighting wildfires – far more than it spends on forest restoration and thinning efforts.
From 1990 to 2021, 502 firefighters died fighting wildfires – including the 19 Prescott firefighters who died in thick brush fighting the Yarnell Fire. That’s an average of about 17 wildlands firefighter deaths annually.
So by any measure, the danger of wildfires to communities like Payson, Show Low and Pinetop has gotten worse since the Rodeo-Chedeski Fire opened our eyes to the danger.
We’ve mostly squandered the last 20 years.
Only question now remains – we going to hit snooze again?