HEBER-OVERGAARD, Ariz. — "The calls kept coming in," Dee McCluskey said. "Do you have this? And then our neighboring departments calling us."
McCluskey was a firefighter in Scottsdale, watching a massive column of smoke rise in the mountains Northeast of the Valley. It was the Rodeo-Chediski Fire. And soon, he would be headed to fight it.
Rodeo-Chediski was actually two fires that broke out within days of each other, then grew together into a massive inferno.
The Rodeo Fire started on June 18, 2002. Leonard Gregg, an out-of-work firefighter, started it near the town of Cibecue. A few days later Valinda Jo Elliott got lost in the forest after running out of gas in her quad. She started a signal fire to get the attention of a passing news helicopter. That fire became the Chediski Fire.
"It was the first time any of us had experienced a large wildland fire," firefighter Wade Allen said. "Much less something of that magnitude."
Allen had just become a full-time firefighter for the Heber-Overgaard Fire District. Really, everyone in the district had. It was an all-volunteer district until shortly before the fires started.
“I remember the day we saw the Chedsiski column building and we kind of knew that we were going to be right between the two," Allen said.
Soon Allen and Wade would be on the same fire lines, trying to protect hundreds of homes that were in the path of the fire.
"It felt like a ghost town," Allen said. "It was just a very surreal feeling.”
Heber-Overgaard had been evacuated. People had fled to evacuation centers on either side of the fire.
“On the one side, the trees are on fire," McCluskey said. Flames, you know, 150 feet in the air raining ashes down on us."
The fires swept toward each other, merging into one large blaze. the smoke column looked like a volcanic eruption.
“We were told that everything on the south side of 260 is already written off," Allen said. Highway 260, a two-lane highway that runs through Heber-Overgaard and divides it in half, would make a natural fire break. At least, that was the hope.
“When it turns to darkness in the middle of the day, and it's smoky and it's ugly...it makes your hair stand on end," McCluskey said.
When the fire passed, 300 homes had been destroyed in the area. Much of the town had been wiped off the map.
Eventually, firefighters managed to contain it, but not before it destroyed more than 468,000 acres.
But in the aftermath, officials started the Arizona Wildland Fire Academy to train firefighters in the same methods, techniques and terminology. It's been held yearly since.
Congress passed, and then-president George W. Bush signed, the Healthy Forests Initiative which made it easier to log on the national forests to reduce fire danger.
Leonard Gregg was sentenced to 10 years in prison for starting the Rodeo Fire.
Valinda Jo Elliott was never charged for starting the Chediski Fire. Years later she was ordered to pay millions of dollars in restitution by tribal authorities.
Dee McCluskey returned to be the fire chief of the town he helped defend.
And in the 20 years since the fire devastated the area, many, if not all, of the homes have been rebuilt. The town has come back, and the fire is not the most obvious feature of the landscape anymore.
But the area is forever changed by the scar of one of the worst wildfires in Arizona history.
>> Download the 12 News app for the latest local breaking news straight to your phone.
>> Live, local, breaking. Download the 12 News app
Arizona Wildfires
Track the latest coverage of the 2022 Arizona Wildfire Season with the current coverage on our 12 News YouTube channel.