“It was sad to see history going away”: Veteran Firefighter remembers the Old Tucson Fire

By Craig Smith

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    TUCSON, Arizona (KGUN) — The Old Tucson Fire was an extreme challenge that firefighters gathered from all over the Valley to fight. Thirty years later, it’s still a vivid memory for firefighters in the battle that night.

“It was the only time in my career that I could stand at an intersection and have fire 360 turn around and see everything burning.”

Randy Ogden has been acting Chief of the Tucson Fire Department, and the Chief on Mount Lemmon. On the night of the Old Tucson Fire he was a Captain sharing information with news crews while watching history burn.

“So it was kind of frustrating to be there and not be able to do more to stop it. And it wasn’t more, it was more of helping history, all the things, the movies that were there over the years, the John Wayne movies and all the older ones that we could watch go away, and that was the sad part.”

The odds were stacked against the firefighters. It was windy. The old movie sets were wood—-dry from years in the desert sun. They were packed close together and the firefighters were short of what they needed most.

“We didn’t have enough water. We ended up having fire departments in the whole valley coming in with water tenders. That’s the big tanker trucks that bring water, because we couldn’t get access to the water they had there in the tanks. There was a problem with the valve systems, so we couldn’t use that. So we had to truck in all the water we used.”

The buildings were movie sets, with no back wall because that’s where the cameras would be. That helped the fire swirl through them and made them more prone to collapse.

It was far too dangerous for firefighters to come close.

“And what that boils down to is, why should we go into those buildings and try to fight it from the interior with the knowledge that it’s going to come down and once the fire gets that big, we’re not saving anything. So for me to call your wife and say, I’m sorry, your husband died last night in a fire that really had no value.; and that’s really become the forefront of most fire departments.”

Chief Ogden says wider roads lead to the new Old Tucson now. There are reliable hydrants and fire sprinklers to protect the new buildings but he says while the new place is great he wishes more people could have seen the original.

“And to see all the things that I grew up with, the costumes that were used filming the High Chaparral series and some of the John Wayne movies. That will never be the same, they’re gone. You could rebuild them or resew them, but they’re not the same. It’s just different. It was sad. It was sad to see history going away.”

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