Bighorn wildfire is approaching Tucson

UPDATE: 6 hours after I published this on 6/10/2020 the Pima County Emergency Management office notified residents of large parts of the Catalina Foothills and nearby Marana to be prepared to evacuate because of the Bighorn fire. No evacuation orders have been issued yet–as of June 11th at 6 am. The website to sign up for emergency alerts in Pima County is https://emergencyalerts.pima.gov/

UPDATE 2: By 4 pm on Thursday, June 11th, 2020 mandatory evacuations were underway in parts of the Catalina Foothills and Oro Valley. Families further east in Tucson have been told to prepare for evacuation. The Red Cross has opened shelters in anticipation of this being a multi-day wildfire event.

Original Post: It’s hot. (104F) It’s dry. (3% humidity) And windy. Then 4 days ago I was awakened at night by a loud thunderstorm although no rain fell on my home here in Midtown Tucson.

The storm, however, ignited a wildfire high up in the Catalina Mountains and has been burning its way south down Pima Canyon toward the city ever since. The terrain is so steep and rocky that only forest service hot shot teams have been dropped into the fire zone. Most of the effort to put out the wildfire, named the Bighorn Fire, has been with helicopters dropping water and fixed wing planes spreading red color phos-chek fire retardant ahead of the leading edge of the fire. And it is still only 10% contained.

One or more idiots sent drones into the skies above the fire zone and the helicopters and planes had to be grounded for a while yesterday. Other idiots sent their drones over the Tortolita wildfire which is raging in the hills outside of Oro Valley, a northern Tucson suburb. Again, the helicopters and planes had to be grounded temporarily. The Tortolita fire which started at the same time as the Bighorn is closer to homes and is now 60% contained.

According to a biologist at the Saguaro National Park, plants burnt by wildfires here in Arizona do not grow back as quickly as plants do in Southern California. In SoCal native chaparral plants thrive after a fire sweeps through. Here, Sonoran desert plants may take decades to regrow.

Here is what I saw during the day at a couple of locations in the city, including from the Catalina Foothills.

Black Lives Matter.

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Tucson trivia: June 15th is the official date of the start of the monsoon. During the monsoon, which runs through the end of September, rain comes every afternoon …or so the Channel 4 weatherman tells us.