Rio Fire 20 years later - FH Times
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. Some homeowners in northwest Fountain Hills did evacuate on their own, packing prized possessions into their cars. 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. 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. 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. He said others were quickly assembling to attack the brush fire to the north. Source: www.fhtimes.com
