A short distance away, power drills whine. Hammers pound.
These are the sounds of a community's rebirth.
A year ago, one of the West's largest wildfires tore through this area, charring 469,000 acres, including mammoth swaths of pine-covered mountains, while overrunning rural subdivisions.
In all, 491 structures were destroyed. The largest group of burned buildings was in Pinecrest Lake, which lost 168 homes _ most in the mobile park. The trees that backed the property were torched, leaving behind only charred trunks, some bearing a few denuded branches.
``Everything was just melted down to nothing,'' said Mary Jane Wagner, 68, whose home was reduced to a foot-high heap of debris.
Today, she has a new mobile home. The flower bed next to her driveway, planted before the flames swept through, has come back on its own _ a bright collection of purple, pink and red blooms.
The couple also planted a maple sapling. ``We will have trees again. It won't be the tall ponderosas, but we'll have trees,'' said her husband, Les Wagner, 74.
The fire, the largest in state history, began in two parts on June 18 and June 20 on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation south of this eastern Arizona community.
Authorities say the first fire was started by part-time firefighter Leonard Gregg so he could make $8 an hour in his seasonal job with a Bureau of Indian Affairs fire crew. He faces trial on federal charges.
The second fire was started by Valinda Jo Elliott, a Phoenix woman who was trying to get the attention of a television news helicopter after being lost in the wilderness for two days.
The wildfires eventually merged on June 23.
As they advanced, about 30,000 people were evacuated from homes in Show Low, which serves as the region's commercial hub, and Heber-Overgaard and surrounding communities. Residents lived in fear and uncertainty for days. Frustration mounted as the evacuations dragged on _ in some cases for up to two weeks.
``It was a very bizarre sort of thing. It just grew and grew and grew,'' said Heber-Overgaard Fire Chief Mell Epps. ``It was like it was self-propelled. You could hardly stop it. You couldn't slow it down.''
A massive firefighting effort eventually saved Show Low and other communities. Subdivisions west of Show Low were devastated.
But construction here and in neighboring communities has been steady since then, with many crews reporting six to eight months of work lined up, said David Ashton, director of Navajo County's development services.
Families without insurance or without enough insurance have been able to get some help from private donations.
Jim Burton, a Heber real estate agent who oversees a committee distributing fire recovery funds, said about $210,000 was donated, and much of the money has been allocated to uninsured residents who lost their primary homes.
Ashton said many of those who were underinsured are turning to mobile homes rather than conventional construction to get a new start. Businesses are also rebounding.
``Things are actually doing pretty well,'' said Ronna Lea Martinson, who owns several retail businesses in the brightly painted western-themed storefronts in Overgaard's Bison Ranch.
Thirty-eight of the log cabin-style homes in the development were burned, but most are being rebuilt, said Martinson, whose husband, Gary, is the Bison Ranch developer.
Pinecrest Lake resident Beverly Fraser, 71, said there were plenty of reasons to rebuild, even with the loss of so many of the pine trees that originally attracted people here.
``We still owned the lot. The same nice people are here. We have the climate and the nice clean air,'' she said. ``We still had four out of five things. ... We just lost the trees.''
Elizabeth Baer, 32, a cashier at the Overgaard Market, said most people who can afford to rebuild are doing so, and the community has mostly returned to normal.
But even so, the memories of the fire linger.
After two long weeks of evacuation and fear her home would be burned down, the prolonged tones of the emergency broadcast system alert still trouble her, said Baer.
``The test sound on the television puts a shiver through me to this day. I feel silly, but it does,'' she said. ``It was just so horrible.''
