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/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Explore more of Starbucks at Starbucks.com. http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1015 \----------------------------------------------------------/ Away From the TV Cameras, Fire Consumes Apache Land June 27, 2002 By CHARLIE LeDUFF CIBECUE, Ariz., June 26 - "Pray for rain," say the signs posted along the Fort Apache Indian Reservation roads. The springs are drying up here, and the forest is an angry inferno. The monsoons are supposed to arrive next week but there are no signs that they will get here soon. The medicine man has called for a rain ceremony tonight, the first in years. While national attention is focused on the threat Arizona's wildfires pose to Show Low, the resort town 40 miles northeast of here, the blaze has already brought widespread and lasting economic damage to Apache country. Questions over the origin of the fire have also rekindled longstanding tensions between the white and the Indian communities. Consider that both the Rodeo and Chediski fires started here last week on the White Mountain Apache territory, home to 13,500 people. The fires have merged, sending anvil-like clouds high into the sky and casting flames across the vista. Sixty percent of the fire is on Indian land. Of the 350,000 acres of timber already destroyed, more than 200,000 are here on this 1.6 million-acre reservation. The tribal economy is devastated. This is the time when the trees are supposed to be harvested but that will not happen. More than $300 million worth of timber has been turned to ash. The sawmills have shut down and 300 people are out of work. "No water and it hurts," said Johnny Endfield, vice chairman of the White Mountain Apache, who had just toured the southern flank of the Chediski fire, which was caused by a hiker lost in the woods. "That timber has been here since before our time," Mr. Endfield said. "And in less than 30 minutes it's all gone. Gone for us and gone for our unborn." While 5 percent of the fire is under control, officials said, it seems to be sprawling in every direction. "It's still going to be a long time - several days - before we get the upper hand on this fire," Jim Paxon, a spokesman for the United States Forest Service, said. Flames spun by the wind continued to move northwest near Heber-Overgaard, where 10 homes were destroyed on Monday. "It's nothing but a wall of smoke and we can't see nothing," said Richardson Antonio, an Apache firefighter and division supervisor in the area, speaking by cellphone from near Heber-Overgaard. "We got to get the hell out of here," he said. "It looks like it took out houses down by the stand of ponderosa trees." To the south, spot fires regained momentum as the winds continued to gust at 20 miles per hour. The area is covered in a thick, white ash, making it look like an Ansel Adams winterscape. Normally nocturnal coyote, elk and rabbits skittered across the bulldozed roads in the middle of the day, a bad sign, the Apaches said. About 1,500 firefighters are battling the blaze on the southern and western flanks, about 2,500 north and east around the towns of Show Low, Heber-Overgaard and Pinedale, officials said. They are Indians and white people, college students and full-time, professional firefighters. Linton Ethelbah, a firefighter with Fort Apache Engine 407, and his four-man crew were battling the flames with a pumper truck on Tuesday. Life here cannot exist without trees, he explained. Without their shade, people are naked and exposed. A fire-starting thunderbolt, a camp fire, a flare can be a cataclysm because a man cannot survive longer than his shadow. "This is the strangest fire I ever seen," said Mr. Ethelbah, who explained how the Chediski fire had chased him and his crew up a bluff last week. "It's just tremendous; half the size of Rhode Island they tell me." Tim Rash, a white man and a firefighter with the Bureau of Land Management, was clearing underbrush near the Apache crew as trees exploded like popcorn kernels. He does the job for thrills. "I saw a fire like this once in 1988 in Yosemite," Mr. Rash said. "You know what we did? We let it burn until the snows came." Although the Yosemite decision proved wise, as the national park is green and thriving again, letting their forests burn is not an option for the Apache people. To let the forest burn will mean economic ruin. The Hon Dah Resort and Casino, the second-largest employer in the White Mountain region after the county government, brings in more than $130 million a year, and is now closed for what is normally its busiest season. The tribe also operates Sun Rise Ski Resort. "We sell our beautiful lakes and streams to tourists," Roger Leslie, the general manager of the resort, said. "We don't know what we'll have until the smoke clears." Other potential losses of income come from the damage to wildlife. The tribe sold about 65 permits to hunt elk on the reservation last year at an average price of $15,000. There are also bear and mountain lion hunts. The hunting grounds are in the area of the Chediski fire, along with a sacred lake, burial grounds and archeological sites. There is an undertone of ill will running throughout the region. Indians feel sorry about the fire, the bigger one started north of the Red Dust Rodeo Grounds here, and word on the reservation is that it was set by a teenager from the Cibecue community. While authorities continue to investigate the fire's origin, resentment is growing among white people in some northern towns. Threatening messages have been left on the answering machine of Dallas Massey, the tribal chairman, laying blame for the fire at the feet of the Apache. Off-handed racial slurs have been tossed at the Indians shopping in the discount stores in the area, accusing them of intellectual inferiority. These people seem to forget that the Chediski fire was started by a white woman, lost in the wilderness, who lighted an illegal fire to attract the attention of a news helicopter. Few reporters have come to the reservation. Little emergency aid has been sent to White River, the seat of tribal government, though 1,500 Apaches have been evacuated from their homes. Some are staying at the Chief Alchesay Activity Center, some with relatives on the reservation, some in tent cities near the trickling rivers. President Bush did not set foot here on his visit on Tuesday although dozens of Indians stood in the afternoon sun along Highway 60 at the rumor that he might drive through. "We've done all we could," said Herbert Tate, a board member of the Fort Apache Timber Company, explaining that the Apache forests are not clearcut, but are thinned and managed year round. "We were burning out underbrush last year until residents of Phoenix complained that the smoke was drifting into the city and making their air quality poor," Mr. Tate said. "The problem is not management. The problem is a lack of water." So now the region's air is thick with smoke from the early summer's fires. Despite the drought, sprinklers continued to feed the suburban lawns in Phoenix last night. Meanwhile back at the fire camp, the men stretched out on the roofs of their trucks, staring at the 300-foot flames devouring the timber line along the ridges. 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