With a minimal amount of assistance from the weather to make backburning possible, firefighters can see the shape of the tunnel, if not quite the light at the end. As long as there is no serious wind event to blow the smoldering embers back to life, the fire is being slowly surrounded and contained.

Update – no help from the weather:

The National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning for Thursday and Friday. Fire crews on the Wallow Fire are preparing for strong winds that will challenge containment lines.

The National Weather Service has upgraded the Fire Weather Watch to a RED FLAG WARNING in effect from 11 AM to 8 PM MST Thursday and Friday for strong winds and low relative humidities.

According to the Service critical fire weather conditions can be expected from late morning through early evening on both Thursday and Friday. Winds will be from the southwest 15 to 25 mph with gusts of 35 to 45 mph. Afternoon minimum relative humidities will range from 5 to 12 percent.

Information from the current Wallow Fire InciWeb Page

• Date Started: 5/29/2011
• Location: Apache, Navajo, Graham, and Greenlee Counties, San Carlos and White Mountain Apache Reservations, Arizona; Catron County, New Mexico
• Cause: Human – under investigation
• Size: 478,452 acres [748 miles² 1936 km²] based on infrared data
• Percent Contained: 20%
• Injuries to Date: 7
• Residences: 2,714 threatened; 32 destroyed; 5 damaged
• Commercial Property: 473 threatened; 4 destroyed
• Outbuildings: 1,216 threatened; 36 destroyed; 1 damaged
• Other: 1 truck destroyed
• Number of Personnel: Approximately 4,656 including 22 hotshot crews and 72 hand crews
• Equipment: 19 dozers, 315 engines, 78 watertenders
• Aircraft: 25 helicopters, 5 air tankers, DC-10
• Incident Commander: Jim Loach, Area Command Team 3

[Read more →]

John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou in the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June, 1215, signed the Great Charter in the presence of assorted heavily armed peers of the realm, who assured him it was the right thing to do.

The British Library has pictures of the Magna Carta available, and Wikipedia has a nice discussion of the document.

The Magna Carta of 1297 is permanently residing in the US National Archives.

The Avalon Project’s translation of the 1215 version with an index and definitions.

John abided by the charter for several months, before he returned to business as normal, but the principle was established – no one is above the law.