As always, Time puts out some incredible work, photography, and film. In putting aside all the controversy which has arisen over the past decade… what truly matters are the victims of this tragedy. Here are four very power recounts of the events which occurred ten years ago by four survivors of this catastrophic event.
I am unable to embed this piece, so please click on this link to view. The rest of this site is well worth viewing, as well. Time photography is always superb.
(Reuters) – More than 1,000 firefighters converged on this village in the Gila National Forest on Saturday as a massive wildfire that scorched eastern Arizona moved to a quarter mile from the New Mexico border.
With the winds picking up, temperatures rising and humidity low, the National Weather Service issued a Red Flag Warning for this sparsely populated corner of the state, indicating grave fire danger.
“Everything is ripe for a perfect storm,” Fire Information Officer Sean Johnson told Reuters.
“There’s not enough hose and water to put out a fire in these conditions.”
Firefighters raced to set controlled fires, designed to deny the advancing wall of flames the fuel it needs, “so we can manage the fire instead of the fire managing us,” Johnson said.
The fire has forced some 10,000 people from their mountain homes and charred more than 600 square miles of mostly pine-studded forest land in Arizona.
Although the so-called Wallon Fire has not entered New Mexico yet, its smoke has hung ominously in the skies over some parts of the state for days.
On Saturday, the Albuquerque Isotopes minor league baseball club was forced to push up its game against the Nashville Sounds by three hours to get it in before an new wave of smoke rolled in from the southwest.
Weather forecasts call for wind gusts of up to 35 miles per hour to buffet the already hard-hit area, with low humidity adding to the already bone-dry conditions.
“We’ve had this scenario before in this fire,” Flory told Reuters. “We’re just going to have to do our best with the conditions in front of us.”
Fire officials said progress had been made against the monster blaze that has raged in and around the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest since May 29. As of early Saturday, the fire was 6 percent contained and more was expected to be announced later in the day.
The easing of high winds that had rapidly spread the flames for several days earlier this week had allowed a fleet of water-dropping helicopters to work to douse the blaze, and a DC-10 supertanker carrying payloads of fire retardant took to the air on Thursday.
Ground crews worked around the clock with bulldozers to cut buffer zones between the fire’s edge and populated areas and to set backfires designed to draw flames away from homes.
Flory said the helicopter crews, too, were taking part in backfire operations, dropping “aerial ignition” canisters into remote, hard-to-reach stretches of forest behind fire lines.
Their job was eased as the blaze, which ranks as Arizona’s second largest on record, began burning out of the heavy timber into areas with fewer trees, fire officials said.
The latest aerial infrared images of the fire showed it has consumed nearly 409,000 acres, or almost 639 square miles. The Rodeo-Chediski fire charged nearly 469,000 acres in 2002, making it the largest in Arizona history.
The Forest Service reports that the fire has destroyed 29 homes in eastern Arizona, including 22 homes in the town of Greer, a small mountain retreat of about 200 dwellings. Another five residences were damaged and 35 nonresidential buildings have been lost.
No serious injuries have been reported.
Fire crews have so far kept flames from encroaching on two larger nearby towns of Eager and Springerville, ordered fully evacuated on Wednesday.
The towns are home to roughly 8,000 permanent residents combined, accounting for most of those displaced in the White Mountains region, a popular vacation destination for Arizonans seeking to escape the summer heat.
Flory said an estimated 1,900 people already had been forced from their homes by the time Springerville and Eager were evacuated.
Springerville Mayor Eric Baca, 38, who has lived in the area his entire life, called the fire “a punch in the gut.”
“This is devastating,” he told Reuters by telephone. “This couldn’t have happened to a more pristine area. This is our lifeblood … and now a lot of it is gone.”
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Source: Reuters
Photos by REUTERS/Joshua Lott
(CBS/WKMG) OCALA, Fla. – Six people, including a 15-year-old girl and three other teens, were arrested Tuesday in the murder of 15-year-old Florida boy Seath Tyler Jackson, who was lured to his murder by text message and whose remains were hidden in paint cans, according to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
According to deputies, Jackson was shot multiple times by 18-year-old Michael Bargo, who is charged with first-degree murder, in a house in Summerfield, about 60 miles north of Orlando, reports CBS affiliate WKMG.
Michael Bargo, 18, who is charged with first-degree murder
The others arrested were:
Charlie Kay Ely, 18, of Summerfield, who is charged with first-degree murder
Amber E. Wright, 15, of Summerfield, who is charged with first-degree murder
Justin Soto, 20, of Summerfield, who is charged with first-degree murder
James Havens III, 37, of Summerfield, who is charged with accessory after the fact to first-degree murder
Kyle Hooper, 16, of Summerfield, who is charged with first-degree murder
Deputies said Hooper, Wright, Ely, Soto and Bargo were involved in the planning and luring of Jackson to the home.
On Tuesday, a woman told deputies her 16-year-old son had witnessed Jackson’s slaying in a house in Summerfield.
Authorities said the 16-year-old, who is not being identified because of his age, told investigators the group plotted the slaying because Bargo hated Jackson. Authorities say Jackson was lured to the house by a text message.
Deputies said once Jackson arrived at the house, Ely and Bargo began hitting him in the head with wooden objects.
According to the sheriff’s office, Bargo then shot Jackson several times. When Jackson tried to escape, Soto held him down while Bargo continued to shoot him, authorities said. Then, according to the report, Bargo broke the teen’s knees and group members hog-tied him and put his body in a sleeping bag, which was placed in a fire pit in the backyard and burned.
At that point, the sheriff’s office said, the group used bleach to clean the house and shoveled Jackson’s remains into 5-gallon paint cans.
Investigators are still searching for a .22-caliber revolver used in the slaying. The Sheriff’s Office said a dive team found three 5-gallon paint buckets Wednesday afternoon in a lime rock pit. The contents of the cans are being tested to determine if they contain Jackson’s remains.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, some of the suspects told investigators that Bargo shot Jackson. Bargo was located and arrested in Starke, where he fled to stay with friends, deputies said.
The Sheriff’s Office said it was later discovered that Havens was aware of the plan to kill Jackson and assisted with the disposal of the remains. Also, Havens gave Bargo a ride to Starke in an effort to avoid capture, deputies said.
All six were being held in the Marion County Jail.
