TOLLESON, Arizona. – An abandoned palm farm in Tolleson caught fire on Tuesday evening.
A cell phone video taken by Chloe VanHoose shows several burning trees as she drives past in her car.
“As we drive by, you see lots of trees and fuel, and it’s getting bigger and bigger. Lots of wind,” she said.
Exactly along Broadway Road and 83rd AvenueA fire broke out at the former palm farm on the evening of August 6th.
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“The fact that we got there right at the height of the heat, before the fire department arrived, was a spectacle,” she said.
The next morning, August 7, the charred ground was still smoldering.
For David Van Hofwegen, the former owner of the property, this was quite a sight.
“We have memories. Our kids were really little and already high school age. My wife and I had these little seedlings in these big old boxes and we went back and forth, planting 500 of them by hand and watering them, pruning them and now they’re gone,” he said.
He sold the former Dutch View dairy farm to the Arizona Department of Transportation a year ago, but still lives in the house next door.
Initially, emergency services believed that a lightning strike might be the cause, but the investigation is still ongoing.
Radar shows that the first lightning strike during the August 6 monsoon storm occurred 40 minutes after the fire started.
“Impressive flames. You could see them a mile north. We have a nephew and niece up there and they sent us pictures. You could see them three miles down the road. Two miles west you could see them. I’d say 30 to 40 foot flames,” Van Hofwegen said.
The land is expected to be leveled at some point in the future.
