Charles Molineaux: Hope for Arizona town

CNN's Charles Molineaux

SHOW LOW, Arizona (CNN) -- Wildfires have burned more than 350,000 acres and destroyed hundreds of homes in Arizona. By Tuesday, the edge of the Chediski-Rodeo blaze was less than a mile from the town of Show Low.

CNN Correspondent Charles Molineaux, who is following firefighters' efforts to contain the blaze, spoke Tuesday to CNN's Daryn Kagan.

MOLINEAUX: The word from the Forest Service is that they are increasingly getting a handle on maybe cutting off some of the approaches of this fire to the town of Show Low, but there is still no containment at all on the huge Rodeo-Chediski fire, and it is now within a half a mile of town.

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Overnight, the crews were out on the fire lines setting up new burning-out areas -- black zones that should function as barriers for the fire. They have been trying to create this fire break for a few days now. They say that if they can hold these lines [Tuesday] and finish creating more of this line, that Show Low, the nearby community of Lakeside, should be pretty secure. That's how they are putting it, and that is at this point the best that they can promise.

There has been considerable progress by this fire, and one word from the Forest Service is that once they actually get around to measuring the miles of perimeter around it, it is going to be astounding just how huge this fire is. It is now figured to be around 330,000 acres, plus more than 340 structures have been destroyed, including something in the neighborhood of 200 homes.

And actually what we saw over the course of the past 24 hours is it went across a significant power line and burned down some of the power poles. The local utility has managed to route power around it. They are taking their little victories where they can. And one thing for the Forest Service is that over the course of the past day, it was the first day in five that they didn't actually lose any structures.

KAGAN: That is good news, but with well over 200 homes gone, Charles, tell me about the flags that have been placed on some homes. What does that represent?

MOLINEAUX: Well, the concern is that some of these homes are at high risk, and the crews have been going in and trying to make sure that they can protect these homes.

The one problem that they have had over the course of the past 24 hours is this dense smoke. What they have been doing a couple of times is sending the slurry [fire-retardant] bombers in to bomb individual homes and yards to protect them, those at the highest risk. And they have actually had some problems doing that, spotting homes and getting in there because of the thick smoke.

But the crews have been on the ground going to clear out brush, clear out woodpiles, clear out decks, refuse, anything that might be encouraging the fire to move toward a structure. That has been a major problem, especially as these spot fires move toward Show Low. They actually did not have a whole lot of problem with that [Monday], but that is something they are very much anticipating as embers come flying down into town.

We have seen what looked like a very mild snowstorm of ash coming in over the course of the past day. The expectation is we are going to see more of that [Tuesday], and there may be flaming embers coming down, too. Local cops will be looking for them.

KAGAN: The governor, Jane Hull, is calling this the worst fire ever to hit Arizona, and it has brought up a lot of controversy and discussion about what could have been done. I understand that members of the Apache tribe actually wanted to do some controlled burns in this area last fall, but local residents said they didn't want to deal with the smoke, and so that controlled burn was called off.

MOLINEAUX: Yes, there has actually been some controversy, even going back to the fires we have seen in Colorado, over how the forests have been managed and how they may have been allowed to grow without there being any fires and no thinning.

Interestingly enough, just [Monday] night, Jim Paxon with the Forest Service said that they had one of their burns get out of control on them and run into the area where there has been a controlled burn years ago on the Apache reservation, and the fire quieted right down once it hit this area where there had been the burn. Real stark evidence of the fact that even years later, these controlled burns can do a lot to keep fires down.

We can expect to hear a lot of debate. It has already begun over forest policy, over the doing of these controlled burns. They may be controversial, but the Forest Service says that they do succeed in preventing catastrophic fires and that we may be seeing some of the consequences of not doing enough of them in recent years.