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Willow Fire outburst prompts Beeline closures: Wednesday 1 p.m.

By Jim Keyworth, Roundup staff reporter

Wednesday, July 7, 2004

A portion of the Willow Fire jumped containment lines near the Bar-T-Bar Ranch 12 miles south of Payson late Tuesday afternoon, prompting fire officials to close Highway 87 from about 9:30 p.m. to 4 a.m.

"We had a little bit of activity late yesterday evening when (the fire) slopped over our containment lines - the dozer line we had constructed several days prior to that," Deputy Incident Commander Bill Van Bruggen said. "Those things happen from time to time, so we backed up a little bit, worked that fire edge, burned out some, and had to close the highway for that exercise."

Highway 87 will be closed again at 1 p.m. today (Wednesday) for several hours while additional burnouts are conducted, and then a hard closure will be instituted later today or tomorrow while the area around the heavy power lines south of Highway 188 is mitigated.

"This is just a temporary closure while they're burning off that highway from the Bar-T-Bar Ranch the past the junction of Highway 188 so we can mitigate that country in there, so when a hard closure does go into effect the folks will have a free route without any hassles to go through Globe if they need to go to Phoenix," LEO Liaison James Clawson said.

The hard closure of Highway 87 will probably last two days, according to Van Bruggen.

"If the fire does someting unpredictable like it did yesterday, we may have to scramble and move on this faster," he said.

Communities south of Payson are in no danger at this time.

"People who live in the area shouldn't be alarmed," Van Bruggen said. "We've got the situation under control again.

"There was a little bit of excitement last night, but when you look at the big picture, it's just a little blip."

The rest of the Willow Fire is in good shape according to Van Bruggen.

"We flew the fire this morning and really in many areas it looks really good," Van Bruggen said. "On the west side, miles and miles of it are fairly cold. The north flank looks really good.

"Really, the area where we're concentrating the majority of our resources right now is the southeast flank where we have the major power line issue and certainly the highway issue."

The fire currently stands at 94,300 acres and is 22 percent contained.