Apache hopes go up in flames in Arizona fire

The largest forest fire in Arizona's history remained out of control yesterday, with 600 abandoned homes directly in it path.

After several days of favourable weather, the humidity dropped and winds picked up on Friday, driving a wall of fire towards Forest Lakes Estates, 40 miles from the beleaguered town of Show Low. The 640 square mile wildfire has already destroyed at least 423 homes, caused 30,000 people to be evacuated and caused millions of dollars of damage since it started on 18 June.

One of the largely overlooked effects of the blaze has been the devastation of a people almost entirely reliant on the land. In the Fort Apache Indian reservation, a medicine man has been praying for rain. But he and the rest of the White Mountain Apache tribe know that even if the rain comes, it will now be too late to avert an economic disaster of perhaps unprecedented scale.

"We're having a really bad time on the reservation because of the timber [we have lost]," the tribal chairman Dallas Massey said in a telephone interview. "We roughly estimate that more than 150 million feet of board has been lost because of the fire. That is just on the reservation."

In the most basic terms, the fires that have savaged the tinder-dry American West, have destroyed the Apaches' one cash crop – the ponderosa pines that previously covered the 1.6m mountainous acres of the reservation and which were harvested and turned into sawn wood at the tribe's Fort Apache timber company. Until two weeks ago the company employed around 75 people, all of whom have now been laid off.

While those numbers may not seem massive, even before the lay-offs unemployment among the tribe's 13,000 adults stood at 60 per cent. Half of the tribal families have an income that is judged to be beneath the poverty line.

However, the loss of the timber will have a devastating effect not only in the short to mid term. While the fire has destroyed $2m (£1.3m) of pending timber sales, the longer term cost has been estimated at up to $237m because, according to the US Forest Service, it will take more than 100 years for the tribe's forest to recover.

"It is very sad for the people who used to look out over the beautiful trees," said Mr Massey. "They will never see them again in their lifetime." The tribal vice-chairman Johnny Endfield said he had toured the burnt areas with tribal elders. "I think they were crying inside to see this land that was once a beauty," he said.

Mr Endfield said that outside of the reservation much attention had focused on the loss of people's homes but to the Apache the land represented everything. "They experienced a loss of structures but those structures will go back up."

In addition to the loss of timber revenue, the fires have also had a terrible effect on the tribe's other sources of income – hunting and gambling. Non-Native American hunters pay up to $13,500 to shoot an elk on the Apache land but that has also been halted. The tribe's hotel, casino and convention centre in the town of Hon Dah have also closed, costing an estimated $3.3m in revenues over the next three months.

All combined tribal businesses expect to lose around $8.4m over the next three months. Mr Massey said it was essential that the tribe found an alternative source of income, possibly by persuading a factory or manufacturing plant to locate in the reservation.

The fire that started on 18 June north of the reservation town of Cibecue was initially tackled by Apache firefighters. It burned for 24 hours on the reservation and the firefighters thought they had it contained until it exploded beyond their reach and joined another fire, started by a hiker setting off an emergency flare.

Earlier this week, around 100 members of the tribe gathered at its holy site to pray for healing. The medicine man, Harris Burnette, beat a water-filled drum and called for an end to the fire. The tribe prayed all night but the rain did not come.