Bighorn Wildfire - Tucson

Friday night, about 10:15pm, our first thunderstorm happened, first one since coming to Oro Valley.  And it was a doozer. a wildfire started from lightning hitting the Catalina Mountain near us.  I remember getting up after the huge thunderous sounds, looking out the living room window and saw a weird sight - looked like someone had a huge ball of lights sitting above their home.  Got the binoculars out and saw it was fire.  Holy smokes!  Distance from us to the fire - guessing about 5 miles.  5 close miles.

Okay - what the heck am I looking at - right after
lightning hit

Saturday morning - oh boy

Saturday morning we found out that a second fire, the Tortolina Fire, was going on near us and that was about 5 miles away also.  We could see the smoke as we looked behind us to the west.  Rut roh.  We have experienced being near wildfires while traveling in the summer, some were pretty close and we were on standby to evacuate but never had to.  So far we are not in danger here, but you never know.  

Tortolina Fire

And the tankers and jets have come in to help

And it has gotten very bad.  What was first just a brush fire moving up the mountain has, as this morning, grown to 13,500 acres with over 660 personnel battling the now huge fire.  It has swept up over the mountains going eastward and startled the city of Tucson, then it moved north and circled around and came back west over the mountains again.  This time forcing evacuations of homes not far from us in Oro Valley.  

Seeing the retardant drop from the bellies of the planes - amazing to see.

We are on the other side of the mountains, near the city

Lots of air support since the mountains are too rugged and steep for manpower on the ground.  Fire retardant is dropped from the air but there is little or no ground support since fire fighters cannot access the terrain.  So more buckets of water are dropped and then more retardant, a vicious circle.  What makes it worse is that the humidity has been on 7 to 9% most days, temperatures in the 100's, and by late afternoon the winds shift from the south to the west, again forcing the fire to be stoked up and race up the mountain side.  Terrible to see, lousy air quality, and each day as we read the updates, the containment of the fire spreads out into July.  As of this morning it is July 4th.  Yippee.

10 days after fire started - still going strong

We are not used to seeing planes, jets, helicopters, lots of engines on the ground, in this community.  Late afternoon we sit under the pergola in the back and watch the comings and goings of the activity. Some nights we have gone to the community center where there is an elevated clock tower and we head up to that to get a better picture.  Can definitely see all the fires when it gets dark.

The house roars when these fly over

At night you really can see the fires

We think this lifter will carry equipment to the top of the mountain

In the meantime, we are spending our time working and fixing up the place.  Getting sunscreens and bug screens installed, removing and repairing the man door in the garage, doing a little bit of landscaping although its way too hot - its usually 95 by 9am.  We still are not planning at this time to head out any time.  We went through a couple of weeks of cat appointments at the vet, Buddy was so upset by his visit that he broke out on his belly and we are watching that.  Goofy cat.

We read and hear of a spike in COVID19 cases now, do not want to get the illness so we will stick here.  If by beginning of August things look better, maybe then we will head out.