Video: 'Gladiator' wildfire forces evacuations in Arizona About 350 residents in the community of Crown King were under mandatory evacuation after the Gladiator Fire - so named because it started as a house fire on Gladiator Steet - burned 600 acres of ponderosa pine trees in the Prescott National Forest and destroyed three buildings. Fanned by strong and erratic winds and dry weather, the Gladiator Fire also threatened forest campgrounds, lookout towers and power lines in the area. On the San Carlos Apache reservation, in eastern Arizona, another wildfire caused by lightning, charred more than 1,100 acres of Ponderosa pine, juniper and oak over the weekend, while a blaze on the Fort Apache reservation, meanwhile, burned 575 acres brush and grassland. The blazes were the first major wildfires of the season in Arizona this year, after a record 2011 fire season in which nearly 2,000 recorded blazes together swallowed more than 1,500 square miles, according to the National Interagency Fire Centre.