On the corner of my desk at the newsroom is our police and fire radio scanner. The handset squawks every few minutes as firefighters and paramedics, local police officers, Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office deputies and occasionally Arizona Department of Public Safety officers on Interstate 17 serve and protect our residents and visitors.
Understanding police and fire codes become second nature to our journalists, so we know which calls we should send a photojournalist to immediately, which ones will require a follow-up call by a reporter the next morning and which ones we can ignore.
The dispatchers’ voices have become familiar fixtures in our newsroom, directing emergency crews to crime or accident scenes and giving our reporters and photojournalists information allowing us to follow and report their response to our communities in the Verde Valley.
What we haven’t yet heard this year is a major wildfire call. Just over a year ago, around 4 p.m. on a hot and fiercely windy May 20, 2014, our scanner erupted as dispatchers called out water tankers, support vehicles and engine after engine to stop a fire north of Slide Rock State Park.
The first crews on the scene were from the Sedona Fire District, but as the fire spread, crews from the Verde Valley, Camp Verde, Clarkdale and Montezuma-Rimrock fire districts and the Cottonwood Fire Department were either called to the canyon or put on notice that they may be called to support other crews in neighboring jurisdictions now that they were short-handed.
Photojournalist Jordan Reece pulled up stakes on his assignment at the time to rush north and catch the photos of fire crews responding to what became the 21,227-acre Slide Fire, which affected the Verde Valley for weeks and shut down Oak Creek Canyon for months.
This year, the anniversary of that devastating blaze passed relatively quietly as rains from thick clouds have prevented another such tragedy.
However, these unusual late spring rains will soon give way to a dry summer, raising the risk of another major wildfire. This time, the blaze could be near the Village of Oak Creek or in the Seven Canyons area, on Mingus Mountain or near Fossil Creek.
The risk of fire from lightning strikes never goes away, but the potential blaze from an abandoned or unattended campfire, lit cigarette, accidental or even intentional arsonist is up to us to prevent.
If you see smoke, report it immediately. If you come across a smouldering campfire, take the duty upon yourself to extinguish it. Never smoke on forest land during fire season. Let’s make it through the summer without any blazes on which to report.
