C-OC Supt.

 COTTONWOOD — Officials at the Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District expect between 1,700 to 1,800 students will be enrolled when classes start districtwide on Thursday, Aug. 1.

That’s lower when compared to the district’s enrollment before the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared in March 2020. The decline in the student population at the six schools in the Cottonwood-Oak Creek district can also be attributed to changes in the local economy, according to district Superintendent Jessica Vocca.

“The population in the Verde Valley is changing. It’s harder to raise a family here if you cannot afford a home. During 2008 to 2015, we had a big migration of families relocating here, and a lot of those family members were working in the service industry. But, lately we have seen a lot of restaurants closing and people can no longer afford to live in the area, so they are moving away,” Vocca said.

That means smaller class sizes at Cottonwood-Oak Creek District schools this academic year and that can be considered a positive for students and teachers because students will get more individual attention than they would with crowded classrooms.

This year’s anticipated maintenance and operations budget at the Cottonwood-Oak Creek District totals about $13 million, which is a slight increase over the previous school year — roughly an uptick of about $100 per student, Vocca explained.

In addition to state funding and other revenues provided to Arizona public school districts, Cottonwood-Oak Creek District regularly applies for competitive grants to bring in additional money.

Vocca took over as district superintendent last spring after serving as principal at the district’s Dr. Daniel Bright Elementary School. Vocca has been with the Cottonwood-Oak Creek District for 20 years, and she is a Verde Valley native, who grew up in Sedona and Cottonwood.

Her grandmother, Karen Pfeifer, once served on the Cottonwood City Council as vice-mayor and has been involved in other city committees and commissions. Vocca said she uses the inspiration from her grandmother to be dedicated to improving the community and she has some clear goals she wants to achieve as superintendent in the upcoming school year.

Among other things, she vowed to update curriculum and expectations for teachers as well as improving student proficiency in core academic areas. She aims to establish a more diverse and inclusive school culture where students feel physically and emotionally safe and connected.

Vocca has prioritized updating aging buildings, some of which were originally built in the 1950s. In fact, the district headquarters is located in a building constructed about 100 years ago.

“I also want to put more emphasis on the district participating in community outreach and creating tighter bonds with families of students who attend our schools, and that includes finding better means of communications with families. Right now, we regularly use robocalls, emails and apps,” Vocca added.

Currently, the Cottonwood-Oak Creek District reports it has hired all of the teachers needed for the new school year.

“However, we are still recruiting qualified candidates for paraprofessional positions, custodians and bus drivers. Bus drivers are a big need and some districts are even offering signing bonuses for new bus drivers. In the past, we have had to cut routes because we were not able to find enough bus drivers,” Vocca said.

All Cottonwood-Oak Creek schools will continue to provide free breakfasts and lunches for students during the upcoming school year.

As the first day of school quickly approaches at the Cottonwood-Oak Creek District, Vocca encouraged parents and guardians to get their students back into their daily routines including earlier bed times, planning for means of transportation to and from school, and contacting the district and schools with any last minute questions.

“After all, creating a path for success isn’t just up to the student. It’s the family and everyone in the community. We all have to be involved. Yes, it really does take a village,” Vocca said.

Mingus Supt.

 

COTTONWOOD — Melody Herne, Ph.D., the new superintendent of Mingus Union High School District, credits a strict upbringing by her parents and strong devotion to Christianity for helping her land an important leadership position in the community.

“I am a God-fearing woman who prays about everything, and I believe that’s helped me get to where I am today,” Herne told the Verde Independent.

Herne wants to use her position with Mingus Union District to encourage young women to consider careers in public education.

“When I was younger, there were not a lot of female role models. I want to try to use my position here as superintendent to connect to young women. I think being a strong role model requires a person to listen carefully, to ask others how their journey is going? It’s important to connect with young people so you can provide them with good advice about how they can reach their ultimate success,” Herne said.

Herne started her new job in May. Since then she’s been busy meeting her staff, students, parents and the five members of the Mingus Union Governing Board. Herne succeeds Mike Westcott, Mingus Union superintendent since 2019, who announced his retirement in September to allow an appropriate amount of time to find a replacement.

“I am going to use this position to always defend public education. I am focused on helping kids get to the next level in academics and in life. I always depend on prayer to help our schools, and I pray for all of our kids because they are the future,” she said.

Herne relocated to Cottonwood from Scottsdale, where she was previously superintendent of the Salt River Schools for the Salt River-Pima Maricopa Indian Community.

“I came on early in this new position in Cottonwood while Mike Westcott was still in the role. That gave us time to work together and we had a good time. We had a good working relationship,” Herne said.

“Building rewarding relationships is key to success in the superintendent’s role at Mingus Union or any other district where I was involved before I arrived here,” she explained.

Herne was born in Heidelberg, Germany, where her family lived while enlisted in the U.S. Army. Her mother was a teacher, and both parents were influential as Herne embarked on a career in education leadership herself.

“My father was a man’s man,” she said. “He was reassigned to Fort Huachuca, so we moved as a family to southern Arizona. From my mother I learned diligence, she always encouraged me to speak proper English, and I credit her for that,” she said.

While Herne was attending college working on her education credentials, she served as a substitute teacher in Sierra Vista. She landed her first full-time teaching job and moved around Arizona quite a bit over the years, serving in various teaching and administration jobs with Dysart, Higley, Mesa Public Schools and Phoenix Elementary school districts before she ended up with Salt River Schools.

“That’s where I got immersed in their language revitalization programs learning O’odham, Maricopa or Piipaash. They are considered endangered languages. It was a wonderful opportunity learning the language, and I even studied Latin during my earlier years,” Herne added.

In-between her different jobs at school districts, Herne was employed with the Arizona Department of Education, where she helped to create a statewide school grading and evaluation system that still exists today.

In her free time, she loves to sing and she has been involved in church choirs and Sunday School wherever she lived at the time, including at Cottonwood’s Faith Baptist Church.

Tinder Fire Post #9

Here's a short synopsis of The Tinder Fire as of Tuesday morning.  The official burner area is now over 11,000 acres. Quite a bit of containment line has been put in place but the official percentage hasn't been released yet.

The Fire People staged a meeting in Winslow Monday evening and posted a full transcript of the event.  It's the best source yet for understanding the situation.  See: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/article/5763/42779/

At least one photo of a destroyed home has been posted on Twitter but officials haven't released a damage estimate yet.  The fire came within 100 feet of SR 87 on Sunday.

It looks like there is very good containment on the west side of the fire and unless the winds come out of the east, it's very unlikely the fire will cross highway.

Winds will continue to be problematic Tuesday but the much-anticipated stormette will arrive by late afternoon and winds will most like lay down as the mini-storm passes.  Not much precip is forecast--maybe an inch of snow on the fire line.  However, temps will plummet and humidity will soar and those are the two key ingredients fire fighters love and need to have in their favor for an incident such as this one.

Once the winds lay down, fire managers will probably be able to "go direct" on the north end of the fire and bring a halt to the expansion in that area.  Rumors abound that there are three four engine jet tankers waiting to drop retardant on the fire line.  If those tankers can be brought into the asset mix, the tide could turn very rapidly.

There's no word yet on when evac orders will be lifted. SR 87 will remain closed until the evac orders are lifted. Officials made it clear at the meeting last night they didn't want to let people back in only to have them ordered back out.  However, chances are pretty good that the evac orders will be lifted after this stormette passes and officials assess their collective  progress at that time.

We're speculating the evac orders could be lifted as early as Wednesday and almost certainly no later than Thursday afternoon.

The luck of having a stormette come to the fire line is certainly a favorable factor in stemming the evolution of the Tinder Fire.

Tinder Fire Post #8

(The previous Post #8 was deleted.)  The revised burned area has been set at 8,623 acres.  This is based on an overnight infrared flyover by NIROPS.

Total personnel is still listed at 510.  We expect additional personnel to be arriving today so that figure should rise in both the evening and Tuesday morning reports.  We have been unable to determine the quantity and type of aerial assets assigned to The Tinder Fire.

We did learn that an NWS IMET arrived in fire camp yesterday.  The IMET, as usual, will be a huge help to Day's T1 IMT in understanding localized weather patterns.

ABC15 did a Monday morning live flyby and captured very instructive video showing fire behavior at numerous locations along the far flung fireline.  Even though the ADOT Clint's Well weather data site shows relatively light overall wind and gusts in the teens, the ABC 15 overflight indicated active, wind-driven fire behavior.  Since winds are expected to increase Monday, we would expect fire behavior to likewise accelerate.

Winds will continue to blow out of the southwest and south southwest so the trend will be for the fire to continue to burn toward the northeast.  However, yesterday's fire activity produced numerous spot fires alongside and ahead of the main fire.  Fire fighters definitely have their hands full in addressing these challenging conditions.

The Monday morning IMT report indicates structures were lost on Sunday.  However, no official assessment has been conducted to determine the number of structures lost.  Undoubtedly it is too dangerous for officials to venture into the burned areas to conduct such assessments.

Typically in incidents such as this one, the Incident Commander will issue a call for assistance to fire departments from statewide cities and towns.  It is not uncommon for scores of structural strike teams and other assets to be sent to such an incident.  We would expect that to happen today and tomorrow.  We would expect such municipal assets to be assigned throughout the area to conduct structural fire protection in the event of sudden changes in fire direction and/or behavior.

The bulk of our coverage today will be on Twitter via the hashtag #TinderFire.

Tinder Fire Post #7

Obviously, The Wind is The Game here, folks.  Whichever way the wind blows determines what gets toasted and what doesn't.

We always like to look at The Big Picture when it comes to the wind.  If you just wonder about the wind in your own local neighborhood, you're missing the whole drift, so to speak.

Right now there is a "Controlling Low Pressure" in The Great Basin and it is guiding and powering the winds in Arizona.  There's Good News and Bad News in this situation.  First: The Good News!  The Wind direction will remain fairly steady and unlikely to suddenly shift direction(s) under such a pattern.  Now: The Bad News.  The wind speed isn't suddenly going to diminish when the sun goes down as it typically does.

Nope, this is a "frontal driven wind" and those are the worst winds, as far as fire fighting goes, because they are the ones that continue well after the sun goes down and sometimes continue all night along and kick right back up the next day.

Luckily, the prevailing wind direction is going to continue to drive The Tinder Fire northeast.  The farther northeast it goes, the more likely that it runs out of Maxi Fuel and runs into Mini Fuel.  Yes, those grasslands outside of the Coconino Plateau timberlands are rich with dry fuels but those fuels are NO match for air tankers and attack crews.  Once The Tinder Fire hits grass, it's hours are numbered.

 Source: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-97.99,35.72,1225/loc=-111.888,35.838

It's inevitable that many properties on the southeast sector of this area were impacted.  We won't know the damage for a day or two but such damage appears certain. Our Heart goes out to those who have suffered losses.

Tinder Fire Post #6

(Editor's note added at 7:30 AM AZT: The Sunday evening fire report indicated burned area at 8,000 acres. Deduct the 500 acre earlier estimate and that leaves a gain of 7,500 acres or roughly 11 square miles.  That would be consistent with the 2  mile by 5 mile footprint shown by the MODIS data yesterday.)

The Tinder Fire has made at least a four mile run today based on yesterday's fire map and today's MODIS data.  The MODIS data shows the fire expanded to the northeast and this is verified by the fire's smoke plume radar footprint.

We used a pretty straight forward method of "approximating" the fire front location as of the latest MODIS data available to us.

We then interpolated a line of today's "run" to that point.  On a sobering note, if the winds would have been coming from the due south, a run of similar magnitude and length would have theoretically taken the Tinder Fire across State Route 87 and into the densely developed residential areas.

Tinder Fire Post #5

Here's another photo from AZ State Forestry taken at an undisclosed location. 

Here's a look at The Tinder Fire smoke plume as observed at 2:54 PM (AZT) by NWS Flagstaff  NEXRAD radar.  The NWS Flagstaff narrative says the smoke plume now extends 80 miles away from the incident site, reaching as far as Dilkon, Arizona, on The Navajo Nation.  NWS Flagstaff says the winds will continue into the evening:

"Southwest wind gusts in the 40 to 50 mph range to continue through this evening across much of northern Arizona as a late season low pressure system settles over the Great Basin. Wind speeds to decrease after sunset but will remain breezy (15-25 mph gusts to 35 mph) through midnight across the Mogollon Rim and other high terrain. This due to the passage of a mid level vort max. The smoke plume from the Tinder fire is being tracked on radar and extends 80 miles to the north northeast from the source. Expect smoke impacts around Winslow and Dilkon through at least tonight."

Source: https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=fgz&product=AFD&format=CI&glossary=1

Meanwhile, Claudia Hauser sent a photo of the closure of State Route 87 on the south end at Clint's Well.

Meanwhile, APS Tweeted: "Due to the current conditions of the #TinderFire, we are de-energizing about 1,500 customers in the Blue Ridge community. This is being done as part of fire mitigation efforts.

Tinder Fire Post #4

Here is a photo of The Tinder Fire taken about 2:30 PM AZT by Dear Friend Claudia Hauser.  She posted the photo on our Facebook.  Her location was north of Clint's Well on Forest Highway 3 (Lake Mary Road) looking northeast toward the incident vicinity.

Meanwhile, the official closure of State Route 87 from Clint's Well (Milepost 290) to Milepost 312.  Motorists in Winslow are being advised that the road is closed and sly discouraged from heading south.  However, SR 87 is technically still open south of Winslow until Milepost 312.

Most recent MODIS data as retrieved and posted my Matt Pace shows the fire has expanded toward the northeast rather than making a run north on the residential areas.

Tinder Fire Post #3

The above photo was posted on the ADOT Twitter feed around 1:30 PM (Ariona Time) looking north on State Route 87 from the Clint's Well vicinity.  State Route 87 is closed to both north bound and south bound traffic north of Clint's Well. Evacuees have been told to travel north of State Route 87 toward Winslow.

Above is another photo of the Tinder Fire posted on the AZ State Forestry Twitter account. It appears the photo was probably posted about 1 PM (AZT).  There is no location data given.

Tinder Fire Post #2

Evacuation orders have been issued by the Coconino County Sheriffs Office for an immediate evacuation of All Moqui Ranchettes, Starlight Pines, Clear Creek Pines, Tamerron Pines, Ponderosa Pine, Timber Ridge, and Pine Canyon. Evacuees have been instruct to "Go North on AZ87."  (NOTE: We have attempted to co-relate the evac order with the fire map.  The areas in red boxes are mentioned in the evac order.  We will continue to attempt to clarify the evacuated areas.

The winds as measured at the ADOT webcam tower near Clint's Well have been gusting steadily into the 20's since mid-morning.  Some gustshave been into the 30's.  Wind direction has been and continues to be generally from the Southwest  and South Southwest.

SOURCE: https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/timeseries.php?sid=AZT17&num=48

The Tinder Fire Post #1

(This blog has been dormant for well over 5 years so it's a perfect place to put our coverage of The Tinder Fire. Our coverage begins at 1 PM (Arizona Time) April 29.  First we will present what we posted on Facebook within the past hour.  Then we will begin to add "coverage components" as  the incident evolves.)

The Tinder Fire is mighty danged close to Roger and Nancy's cabin in Starlight Pines between Clint's Well and Winslow.

The Forest Service is definitely worried about the fire. How do we know they're worried? Well, they brought in Bea Day's Type 1 Incident Mgmt. Team. (See comment below for more info on Bea Day.) There are already 500 personnel assigned to The Tinder Fire, including 7 Hotshot crews and 3 initial attack crews.

For a late April wild fire, those represent a significant commitment of resources. Starlight Pines and several other summer cabin areas are north of the fire. This time of year, the wind blows from the south so those houses are right in the line of fire under a worst case scenario. It's another Red Flag day down there Sunday and the winds are already blowing such that the aerial assets have been grounded.

Susun's in contact with her brother, Roger, and we will be monitoring the situation from afar.

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5763/

There are only 16 Type 1 Incident Commanders in America and Bea Day is one of them. She's now in charge of the Type 1 IMT that's taken over response to The Tinder Fire near Blue Ridge Reservoir. IC Day knows that country really well and understands the potential worst case scenarios facing fire managers there. Mindi Brogdon did a great article on IC Day when Day was in charge of the Type 1 IMT handling last June's Highline Fire threatening Payson Country. Mindi's article is just about the best summation of IC Day's career and management perspectives as you are likely to find online. IC Day is at left in photo.

http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/forest_management_wildfires/she-s-commanding-in-army---confronting-the-monster/article_3ef416dc-36d8-517b-b33a-2c2714eb040f.html

Two Year Hiatus

This blog has been dormant for more than two years.  Seems like only yesterday that we were posting away here.  We think  we're going to attempt to bring this blog back to life.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  To be totally honest, we forgot we even HAD this blog!  Imagine that.