“I understand your concern, but there are three ways to get out of town,” said David Staub, Payson’s fire chief. “Assuming it’s just the two of them. These he can’t tell you what the two routes will be (today).”

As such, the town and county have developed a plan, but have not released the details to the public for fear of being taken advantage of by “bad” people.

The Gila County Sheriff’s Office still hears about how upset residents of Pine and Strawberry were during the 10-day evacuation two years ago.

“It’s terrible,” said Lieutenant Tim Scott of the GCSO, the agency responsible for the evacuation.

The Gila County Department of Health and Emergency Management agreed.

“It’s a call we get almost every day,” said Emergency Management Manager Carl Melford.

Since each disaster requires a unique response, he explained, “Evacuation routes must be created according to the incident.”

The location of the shelter is the same.

“It’s case specific,” he said.

As such, the county has no designated shelters, no detailed plans for setting up shelters, no traffic control plans, no detailed plans for bringing pets or livestock. There is also no system in place to allow displaced residents to refill misplaced prescriptions. All of these attested to a backbone evacuation problem involving only the estimated 3,000 residents of Pine and Strawberry.

Additionally, Melford says there are no Red Cross volunteers in Lim County. In South County, the Red Cross can find resources from the Phoenix area.

“The American Red Cross is the only conservation organization we partner with in Arizona,” he said. “I think change is needed. The best way to change the situation is to encourage adoption in the Red Cross.”

The problem is that Melford has only one Red Cross volunteer for the entire county of Gila. They are not in northern Gila County.

Lim County accounts for more than one-third of the state’s fire risk, so the need to prepare for evacuation is very high.

In 2009, the Arizona Forestry Department assessed the communities most at risk of devastating wildfires. An example of a wildfire is Paradise, California, which burned down an entire town.

Of Arizona’s 200 communities, 39 are in Gila County. Payson, Pine, and Strawberry all face a greater wildfire danger than Paradise. In that community, embers from a firebreak still far away set fire to entire blocks and even trees along evacuation routes. By the time people got word to evacuate, the trees on fire were blocking many people from evacuating. About 85 died before they could escape. Many attempted to put out fires in homes that were not built according to Firewised or WUI fire resistant building codes.

Firewised public areas, such as schools and substations, were put out without damage. But many people didn’t know they could leave the fire-prone area and take refuge in those open spaces, and Paradise put the plan into writing and put it into practice.

The Arizona community fire assessment examined potential fire behavior, social, cultural, and community factors such as Firewise awareness and evacuation education. The report then examined local resources available to protect these communities.

Many of the small communities in northern Gila County are in the forest below the Rim. Most of the time there is only one way to get in and out of the community. Gila County does not have a Firewise or Fireproof Building Code, so many of these homes will burn.

While it’s understandable that residents want first responders and emergency management to have an evacuation plan, Staub said all Lim County residents should “be prepared, be prepared, and then I’ll be ready.” I explained that I had to leave before we told them to go.

Gila County has developed a plan, but despite receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in state and federal grants, northern Gila County is understaffed, so the Department of Health and Emergency Management has no one to educate the public about its plans. For emergency management.

The county has a website, Readygila.comResidents can sign up for emergency alerts via email, text, and phone alerts. The website has a list to help members of the public prepare to evacuate. Emergency management plans for South Gila County and North Gila County have also been documented. Residents without internet access can call 928-910-4009 for more information and help.

Gila County has a good reputation among state emergency management departments for the number of emergency announcements it has made in recent years, Melford said. However, Melford was contacted 62 times. Most of these notices were issued through the county’s Everbridge text and email alert system. The county is in the process of changing to another cheaper system called Ready Gila.

“We’ve been an exemplary county. We’re the ones the rest of the state comes to see how things are done,” said Melford, a first responder at the meeting. told a forest service official.

The Payson Police Department conducts evacuation drills every year. They single out Payson’s neighborhood, dispatch the police, and go door-to-door to warn people to evacuate.

But it’s too late to leave when cops knock on your door, emergency responders say.

In the case of the Backbone Fire, the wind drove the flames so rapidly toward Strawberry that there was 18 minutes between the commands to “set” and “go”. As a result, the evacuees spent seven hours in traffic jams until they reached Payson. First responders said many people didn’t have enough gas to run down the hill and ran off. Some forgot medicines, dogs, cats, clothes and food. They didn’t have enough money to get into a hotel room and had nowhere else to go.

Police Chief Ron Tischer said things got tough at Payson.

Mr Staub said the fire forced them to evacuate quickly. He told first responders at a preseason fire meeting that he happened to be on the phone with the commander of the Backbone Fire Incident when the fire “passed three trigger points on the mat.”

Only a change in the wind saved Strawberry, Staub said.

“We want to give you a lot of time,” he said, but WildFire has its own timeline.

Payson has not released a detailed evacuation plan. That’s because “there are people with bad intentions,” Staub said, who will try to do harm with that information.

Local nonprofits such as Pine – Strawberry Fuel Reduction and Rim Wildfire Awareness Team have partnered to host seminars on evacuation specifically for seniors.

RIMWAT’s Bob Decker said, “Older people are scared. ‘They think they’ll be forgotten.'”

One of the first seminars will be held at the Payson Senior Center. Dates and times for these trainings are still being adjusted.

Tischer said residents should be packed and ready to leave within minutes. That means doing a lot of work now before the fire starts.

“Prepare yourself as a family,” he said. “We (Police Department) have a plan and we will execute it (but whoever wants to live here has a personal responsibility.”)