The Rio Fire was a child of the weather.

It started with a bolt from the sky and exploded on the winds of a storm’s microburst to become the largest desert wildfire the state had seen up to that date.

It was a weekend, July 7-9, 1995, that few who lived in Fountain Hills or Rio Verde at the time will ever forget – watching and waiting for a possible order to evacuate or stay put. Seeing the flames against a night sky would mean no sleep for many.

A police blockade was set up at Golden Eagle Blvd. and Boulder Drive to allow only homeowners into their neighborhoods.

Others were told to turn around.

Some homeowners in northwest Fountain Hills did evacuate on their own, packing prized possessions into their cars.

Planes and helicopters were used to fight the fire. Water was sucked out of the small SunRidge Canyon pond across from Golden Eagle Park by helicopters to dump on the blaze.

The Rio Fire would burn 23,000 acres, most of that within McDowell Mountain Regional Park, sandwiched between Fountain Hills and Rio Verde.

The fire would challenge the resources of the Rural/Metro Fire Department, State Forestry Department and Forest Service.

While the blaze devastated the desert, especially in the county park, the scorecard at the end showed a win for firefighters – no deaths, no injuries and no structures lost.

Dave Ott, now assistant fire chief and fire marshal in Fountain Hills, was with Rural/Metro in Scottsdale at the time of the Rio Fire.

While a member of a 20-man wildland crew for Rural/Metro, Ott responded that late Friday afternoon on an engine from Pima and Jomax roads.

Ott remembers seeing the lightning and being prepared when the calls started flooding in. The fire started near 136th Street north of Dynamite Boulevard.

“We expected the fire would stay north of Dynamite,” Ott recalls. “When we got there the flames were blowing across Dynamite like a blowtorch.”

There were more houses and ranch properties on the south side of Dynamite and that became a priority for Ott’s unit. He said others were quickly assembling to attack the brush fire to the north.

The wind began to blow the fire back west toward 112th Street and Troon North. Homes there had to be evacuated.

“We were working to keep the roads clear for those needing to evacuate,” Ott said. “We were helping people load their horses into trailers and the next minute picking up hoses to fight fire.”

Ott spent much of Saturday and Sunday working on mop-up operations inside McDowell Mountain Regional Park. He remains a strong believer in the system that brought order to the fiery chaos of that July weekend.

“In the end the (Rio Fire) was inconsequential,” Ott said referring to no loss of property.

While it was colossal at the time, a 23,000-acre fire would barely show up on a list of the largest fires in Arizona over the past 20 years.

It remains unique, however, because of its proximity to developed communities such as Fountain Hills, the Verdes and Scottsdale.

Ten years after the Rio Fire, the Cave Creek Complex fire burned a quarter million acres – 10 times the size of the Rio Fire.

Ott recalls crews having to make accommodations for Governor Fife Symington at the Rio Fire. Today the governor probably would not come to the scene of a fire that size.

Ott credits the training and expertise of those in command of the wildland attack for holding down property damage. He notes that the command structure for wildland firefighting has been in place since the ‘50s or ‘60s.

“After September 11 (2001), it was the forestry people who went in and said we have what you need to manage this,” Ott said. “The command and communications structure was in place.”

Since then it has been FEMA and Homeland Security that have refined the command system with teams to manage disaster response for fires, flood and storms.

Aftermath

By Monday a drive into McDowell Park showed a stark ashen gray landscape devoid of vegetation with plumes of smoke rising from the remains of various ironwood, palo verde and mesquite trees.

Town officials were given a private tour of the area. It was not yet opened to the public.

Twenty years ago McDowell Mountain Park Supervisor Rand Hubbell was working out of a downtown Phoenix office as an outdoor recreation coordinator.

He recalls the scene when they first arrived inside the park. Park officials watched from the perimeter during the firefight.

The devastation was something park personnel found overwhelming. There were reports that more than 100,000 saguaro cactus were destroyed. There was damaged infrastructure to be repaired and potential erosion to deal with as the summer monsoon was just beginning.

The monsoon ended up being a blessing, according to Hubbell. They found that by late fall there were signs of vegetation coming back from the barren soil.

“The fact that the fire was pushed hard by the wind caused the fire to move quickly over the land, and it didn’t kill the root systems,” Hubbell said. “We saw signs of things coming back rather quickly.”

That was not really the case with the saguaros. Badly damaged by fire, they died slowly and many have fallen.

Hubbell recalls that he was contacted by a man from Cave Creek who had a saguaro fall on his property. He was waiting for it to dry up before he removed it and noticed that small roots were taking off from the broken limbs into the ground.

It was that information that prompted an effort to regrow arms from the damaged cactus in the park. A nursery was set up at the site of the current Nursery Tank in the park.

Experts, it turned out, were fairly evenly split on whether or not cactus arms would actually regrow, which eventually led to the nursery project being abandoned.

Unless they are familiar with the news of the fire and the history that goes with McDowell Park, many visitors today would not even notice there was a devastating fire 20 years ago.

If interested in seeing the contrast from before and after the fire in the park, visit the North Trail. Untouched by the fire, the trail shows the lush Sonoran Desert as it was before the blaze.

Another view can be seen from the top of the Lousley Hill Trail. A definite burn line is visible from this high angle.

Today, much a result of the Rio Fire, Maricopa County Parks has a well-established emergency plan.

“There is better communication with fire departments,” Hubbell said.

Crews from the adjoining Rio Verde Fire District visit the park at least once a year to point out issues or concerns related to fire.

The emergency services map uses GPS coordinates, a technology unavailable two decades ago, to help guide fire crews. There are also fire hose connections at major park access points.

“It will happen again,” Hubbell says. “Now staff has clearly defined roles in managing such an emergency.”

That blaze and subsequent wildfires also prompted citizens in Rio and Tonto Verde to establish a “FireWise” program for the Verdes.

That program through the years has implemented various mitigation efforts surrounding the Verdes, most notably the removal of certain vegetation on the perimeters that would only add “fuel” to such wildfires.