SCOTTSDALE, AZ — A year has come and gone since the Diamond Fire spread across north Scottsdale, forcing evacuations and threatening homes.
Some residents have worked to lower the risk of wildfire spread at their own property while investigators still don’t know the exact cause that started the blaze.
”It’s so quiet, there’s no sound out here,” said Karen Nabity while in the front yard of her property.
The remote serenity of living underneath Tom’s Thumb trailhead is partially what brought people like Nabity to this pocket of Arizona.
That peace was disturbed this time last year when she looked out her window and saw smoke quickly turn into the Diamond Fire.
She says she called officials and had a conversation she won’t soon forget.
”They said ‘don’t worry, it’s a level two we have it under control.’ He couldn’t have been more wrong. That fire went from here to my daughter’s house on 144 [Street] in 30 minutes,” she said.
It was at her daughter’s house where Nabity first shared with us the images of how close that fire got to some homes and the raw emotion of evacuating a wildfire.
”You’re driving away and you don’t know if that home is going to be there for the kids to come back to,” she said holding back tears.
The Diamond Fire ended up burning up around 2,000 acres over several days.
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More than 100 homes and 11 hundred residents in Scottsdale were evacuated.
It started as a brush fire that spread from around 130th Street and Ranch Gate Road.
Following up a year later, the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management had previously told us it was human-caused.
However, they’re still waiting on the investigator to determine the exact cause.
”We just don’t know if it was a welder for this pool area, or what was going on,” said Nabity when asked what others in the community had heard about the possible cause.
Going forward, Nabity is doing what she can control by removing brush on her property to help lower the risk of spreading fire.
”It’s great exercise,” she said.
She’s also collecting rainwater in buckets.
She said bigger than the worry of a wildfire is having - enough water.
”Some wells have dried up in the community, in the area I live in the neighbors who’ve had wells don’t have water they can rely on anymore,” she said.
