(June 15, 2009 – 1:45 p.m.) The Tucker Fire was started by lightning and first sighted on Tuesday, May 26, 2009. Over this past weekend the fire grew to 1500 acres. The fire is located on Dick Hart Ridge in the Coconino National Forest.

The fire is 15 miles NNE of Pine, AZ and is burning between Barbershop Canyon and Maverick Canyon. Crews have cleared brush along the U-Bar trail between forest roads 139 and 145, and plan to use this as a natural boundary to keep the fire from spreading any farther north. Firefighters were successful Friday, Saturday and Sunday with the burning that was conducted to secure the North, East and Western boundaries of the fire.

Fire Managers will now monitor the fire until it burns itself out or the monsoon puts it out, which ever comes first. The smoke that the subdivisions in the Blue Ridge area experienced this past weekend was from the Tucker fire, and was not as bad as anticipated. Expect to see smoke in the late evening and early morning hours for the remainder of this week. In view of the fact that the burning has been completed fire managers expect the smoke to lighten considerably each day.

Travel on the U-Bar trail between forest road 139 and forest road 145 is still not recommended.

(Source: Coconino National Forest)