Arizona sheriff blames Mexican smugglers for wildfires
PALOMINAS, Ariz,
(Reuters) - Two Arizona wildfires that scorched a total of a quarter-million acres and destroyed dozens of homes just north of the U.S.-Mexico border were probably started by Mexican smugglers, a county sheriff said on Tuesday.
The assertion by Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever is likely to add to a furor sparked by Arizona Senator John McCain, who suggested that ******* immigrants were to blame for some of the wildfires raging out of control in the state.
The latest of those, the so-called Monument Fire, erupted a week ago at the Coronado National Memorial and spread quickly into an adjacent national forest.
It roared through the steep slopes and rugged canyons of the Huachuca Mountains before breaking out into ranch lands and populated areas over the weekend.
A separate blaze in southeastern Arizona known as the Horseshoe 2 Fire has blackened some 223,000 acres and destroyed or damaged nine dwellings since it began May 8, though it is now listed as 90 percent contained.
Dever told reporters the Monument Fire was "man-caused" and started in an area near the border fence with Mexico, which is closed to visitors and known to *************** for "high-intensity, ****- and human-trafficking."
"It wasn't the rabbits or the rattle snakes that started this fire, it was human beings, and the only human beings believed to be occupying (the area) were smugglers," Dever told a news conference.
He said traffickers light fires to use as signals, to keep themselves warm and as diversions "to keep ... *************** off their backs." He added that the Horseshoe 2 Fire was likely sparked in the same way.
