A seven-mile stretch of State Route 89 through Yarnell was shut down because of the fire.
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Firefighters have a perimeter around 10 percent of the fire and the weather forecast calls for favorable conditions over the next several days, said RobbRoy Williams, the incident commander. But authorities remain confident that the fire won’t grow out of control and containment could still be made by sometime early next week.
Fire officials now say the fire was human-caused and is under investigation.
Authorities say hundreds of people have fled their homes as a wildfire rages near the north-central Arizona town of Yarnell – the scene of a 2013 blaze that killed 19 members of an elite firefighting crew.
The fire is burning near Yarnell, where a 2013 blaze killed 19 members of an elite firefighting crew.
Fire officials said the fire is now headed to the East of Yarnell and they don’t believe the town is in danger anymore. At the time of the request, the fire was threatening 300 homes in and around the community of Yarnell, population 700.
Garcia said the fire was less than a mile southeast of Yarnell and had moved rapidly.
On Thursday night, officials reported the Yarnell-area wildfire had grown to 5,000 acres.
“We’re just trying to stay in this house”, Peeples Valley resident John Knight said. “Right now, here we are three years later doing the same thing”.
The fire covered 600 acres, moving quickly and threatening structures by 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Arizona Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Dolores Garcia said.
The Red Cross opened an evacuation center at Yavapai College at 1100 E. Sheldon St.in Prescott for those who evacuated due to the Tenderfoot Fire.
There are no injuries reported.
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Without that work, “we would not have been successful”, Williams said. Air tankers with fire retardant and ground crews were working to keep the flames at bay. “And there’s helicopters dropping water”.
