The clay springs renegades: when the Rodeo-Chediski fire threatened to destroy clay springs, Arizona, the town's heroic residents battled nature and bureaucracy to save their homes. (Cultural Currents).

Clay Springs is a small Arizona community with dirt streets, a general store, and, according to the July 14th Arizona Republic, a volunteer fire department that "comes second only to the local Mormon church as the glue that holds the community together."

On June 18th, the huge Rodeo-hediski fire (the largest in state history) ignited. It would eventually burn over 460,000 acres of forest land and destroy more than 450 homes. On June 20th, as the fire approached Clay Springs, federal fire officials deemed the situation so dangerous, and destruction of the town so certain, that they ordered residents to abandon heir efforts to save homes and other structures.

The order immediately sparked a bitter dispute between the feds and individuals anxious to try to save their homes. According to Republic reporter Tom Zoellner, "Several heated arguments and near-fistfights with federal officials failed to change their minds." More than two dozen local members of the Pinedale-Clay Springs Volunteer Fire Department disobeyed federal fire commanders by circumventing Department of Public Safety roadblocks and fighting the flames with bulldozers, chainsaws, and hoses.

That night, a frustrated federal operations chief briefed his colleagues about the perplexing political problem, saying (as quoted by Zoellner) that "the people in Clay Springs are fighting the fire in T-shirts and tennis shoes. We're trying to rein them in. They're trying to run a dozer line up there. They're running chainsaws in the dark without headlamps."

That latter offense presumably violated an OSHA regulation or some other federal safety stricture.

Freelance Firefighting

John Lovingwood was among those who slipped past the police barricade. Though not a firefighter, he was deputized on the spot, used equipment borrowed from his employer, and worked through the night to construct firebreaks. "They told us to leave and let our homes burn," he told the Republic. "We told them we were going to stay and fight."