Condo plan OK'd / P. 8
Mt. View rising / P. 24
An edition of the East Valley Tribune
INSIDE
This Week
THEMESATRIBUNE.COM
NEWS ...................... 12 Summers will only be getting hotter, expert warns.
COMMUNITY ....... 15 House fo Refuge gives homeless families hope.
BUSINESS .............. 19 Downtown Mesa cookie shop surprises. COMMUNITY ............................... 14 BUSINESS ..................................... 19 OPINION ....................................... 22 SPORTS ........................................ 24 GETOUT ..................................... 25 PUZZLES ...................................... 26 CLASSIFIED ................................. 26 Zone 1
Sunday, October 25, 2020
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How �ire heroes saved Lost Dutchman Park BY JIM WALSH Tribune Staff Writer
F
irst Water glistened in the spring, its towering green saguaros and palo verdes showing off the Sonoran Desert’s surprisingly verdant terrain and showcasing the Superstition Mountains. But that postcard-worthy scene is now a bittersweet memory, the same desert landscape charred and singed by the Superstition Fire – one of four that have claimed nearly 160,000 acres of mostly pristine desert in the Superstitions the past two years. The Superstition Fire started Aug. 20, burning through 9,539 acres before it was brought
under control Sept. 23 after torching the top of Superstition Mountain near Flat Iron, a steep but panoramic area. The scars around First Water will linger for decades in the fragile desert ecosystem, where it can take 100 or more years for saguaros to grow tall. Now, all that awaits many of the once imposing saguaros is decay. They are either charred or turning an unnatural shade of brown, burned at the base and ready to topple with a good blast of wind. But in the wild�ire that torched the region, First Water died nobly as �ire�ighters served heroically. Fire�ighters made their stand there, saving popular Lost Dutchman State Park to
the south and preventing the inferno from marching north toward scenic Canyon Lake. A bumpy dirt road gave them a critical �ire break to halt the wild�ire’s hellish onslaught. Fire�ighters used torches to set some vegetation ablaze, robbing the advancing �ire of the non-native grasses that had made the area lush in spring but fed the inferno in summer. Planes dumped �ire retardant while �ire�ighters sprayed water from brush trucks in triple-digit heat. The evidence of their labors is obvious to any visitor: to the south lies an ugly burn scar, to the north, lush pristine desert.
Realtor arrested Halloween artist in wife’s slaying on Mesa road
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BY JIM WALSH Tribune Staff Writer
A
mother moved into a friend’s house in East Mesa with her two young boys to escape a husband she suspected of using drugs and hiring escorts. But Janell Mora could not hide from Stephen Mora, who is accused of tracking her down and shooting her to death while she was jogging on Sept. 26 near Power Road and the Loop 202 Red Mountain Freeway. Mesa Police formally arrested the 54-yearold Scottsdale Realtor on Wednesday following his release from a local hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound to the head. Shortly after the shooting, Mora attempted suicide as he sat in his silver Mercedes Benz in the parking lot at Mesa police headquarters,
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Art and Halloween aficionados can find a mutually engrossing exhibit in downtown Mesa with Ray Villafane's amusing, and sometimes scary, pumpkin and scarecrow pieces. For details, see page 14. (Special to the Tribune)