After more than a month, Billy Fire is 70% contained

The Billy Fire, 15 miles south of Young and roughly five miles north of Roosevelt Lake, is  more than 70 percent contained after burning for nearly two months. The fire was caused by lightning on July 9 and started on the east side of the Sierra Ancha Mountains. 

It remains the second largest current fire in the Southwest fire region– second to the Dragon Bravo fire in Grand Canyon National Park–covering more than 27,000 acres of land. The fire is now at more than 70 percent containment thanks to recent monsoonal moisture with higher humidities.  There has been no damage to structures up to this point. 

The area within the fire perimeter is primarily forest land, though it is sparsely populated with ranches, cabins and other properties. 

This includes Ellison Family Farm and Ranch, which was eventually put on evacuation status about a month after the fire began. 

“We watched it for a few weeks, as it was moving super slow, it was burning both sides of Center Mountain,” recalls Aimee Mundy-Ellison, a Globe resident who owns and manages the ranch with her husband. It’s a private property on Cherry Creek of roughly 32 acres with approximately 10,000 acres of grazing lease land. The ranch has been in the Ellison family since the 1930s.

“Then, it definitely started to move,” she adds. “Some weather changed, there was a lot of wind, and so when the ranch started to look like maybe it might be in jeopardy, we went out.”

Though Ellison’s private property went unscathed, some parts of the grazing areas did burn, she says. 

The evacuation advisory for Ellison Ranch was lifted August 18, and by the end of August, she and her husband were preparing to go assess any damage to their allotment now that the area is safe from the fire.

“We haven't been up there yet, so we don't actually know what we have where or what fence lines need to be repaired,” she said. “Now that they're starting to kind of wrap it up, it'll give us an opportunity to go up there and find out where everything is at.” 

Crews began containing parts of the Billy Fire on July 17. By July 26, it was at 2,124 acres and 79 percent contained, with 94 personnel assigned to it.

Containment began decreasing by August 1, and by August 8, the fire size was increasing by several thousand acres per day. 

Arizona’s Central West Zone Type Three Incident Management Team had command of the fire from July 14 to July 27, and resumed command from Tonto National Forest from August 3 until August 23. 

“Around August 5, weather conditions changed. The change in weather brought an increase in fire behavior, increasing the fire size,” explains Tim Jones, lead public information officer of the Billy Fire.

Ellison Ranch was advised to evacuate the morning of August 10. 

By that evening, the fire size had increased by more than 3,300 acres to a total of 12,238 acres. The evening of August 11, the fire had reached 15,488 acres and was down to 12 percent contained. The number of personnel assigned to the fire increased to 484.

“So the fire grew and was in that steep and really super challenging terrain of the Juniper fire scar with dense fuels, fuels that are dense and low to the ground,” Jones says. “So containment went down as the size of the fire increased.”

Not only was the fire burning in a remote area with steep chasms and rocky terrain, the Juniper fire had left behind snags (dead, unstable trees), and the area is riddled with hazardous materials from old mining operations, all of which challenged crews’ abilities to fight the fire safely. 

“In addition to that, the weather conditions have been unpredictable,” Jones adds. “Big thunderstorms and gusty winds have been difficult.” 

Fire crews have employed direct and indirect tactics to fight the fire, Jones says, including hand lines, clearing of vegetation, sprinkler systems, fire engines, aerial resources, trapping of water, large helicopters, using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for scouting and thermal imagery, as well as firing of unburned vegetation between the main fire and containment lines.

Up to 502 personnel were assigned to the fire at its peak, including more than 10 handcrews and 25-plus engines. 

The estimated cost to date of the Billy Fire fire is $18.7 million. For comparison, the estimated cost of the Dragon Bravo Fire is $101.4 million.

Some have taken to social media to publicly express frustration toward the handling of the fire by the Tonto National Forest and the fluctuations in containment of the fire. 

Speaking on behalf of the incident management team, Jones acknowledges the public’s frustration 

“We understand, the firefighters and all people involved in this response, understand and they're really sympathetic that people are frustrated,” he says. “Fire leaders make decisions based on fire behavior, current and expected weather, and we choose actions that have the highest probability of success towards those goals of firefighter and public safety and those values at risk.”

“We had some great crews that protected our structure and made sure that fire didn't damage anything, and they did an amazing job doing that,” Ellison notes. “They kept the fire from all of our structures and our barns.”

To the west of Ellison Ranch within the fire perimeter is Rose Creek Community. Cassandra Fewell, born and raised in Globe, has been a full-time resident for the last 17 years. Just off State Route 288, she owns a ranch there with her husband and their five children on 5.5 acres, right next door to her mother and father in law. 

Fewell echoes Ellison’s sentiment.

“The crews did everything they possibly could to keep the fire minimalized, save houses and clean up the brush and everything so it didn't just take over the whole forest,” she says.

She and her children left home during the Billy Fire for several days as a precaution to avoid smoke while the teams backburned near the house to prevent the fire from jumping the road. 

“We didn't necessarily have to leave,” she says. “My husband, my in-laws, everybody else stayed. And even all the rest of the residents that live up here, they also stayed. It was just me and the kids that went down for the four days.”

“They cleaned up so much vegetation,” she adds. “All the big trees are still standing. It really looks fantastic. They did an amazing job.”

Aside from smoke, the only other noticeable impact on the Fewell’s property was an uptick in bears.

“The fires pushed some bears in on our property,” she says. 

“My apple trees were loaded this year. And the bears have just destroyed, ate, all the apples,” she laughs. “They broke branches off of all of them. I think we had five different bears in one morning.”