May 18, 2012
The Payson Airport has served as the base for many firefighting helicopters.
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Mega fires: Much worse yet to come
The fierce start of the 2012 fire season last weekend offers a frightening portent of things to come in Rim Country, according to mounting evidence. Researchers say that the tree-ring and fossil records stretching back for thousands of years show little sign of the sort of recent “mega fires” that have sterilized soils and reduced whole forests to a moonscape of ash with increasing frequency in the Southwest. “Mega fires are huge, landscape-scale fires in excess of 100,000 acres. We’re seeing this throughout the West, but Arizona is on the leading edge,” said forest ecologist and Northern Arizona University Regent’s Professor Wally Covington.
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