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Arizona Warm Fire 10 Years Later: A Cautionary Tale

Firefighter
National Interagency Fire Center
Researchers were tasked to create a shelter that could repel radiant heat, which is felt standing near flames, and convective heat, felt if you put a hand into the fire.

June 8, 2016, marks 10 years since the Warm Fire sparked controversy north of the Grand Canyon. Fire managers decided to manage the blaze to get rid of dense fuels. But days later strong wind gusts pushed the fire beyond its boundary and changed the landscape for centuries to come.

When lightning first sparked the forest on the Kaibab Plateau, it was what fire ecologists consider a productive fire -- cleaning up the low lying fuels and small diameter trees within the mapped boundaries. Wally Covington who heads the Ecological Restoration Institute says the fire rolled along like this for more than two weeks burning 20,000 acres. 

“Things were looking good there was a great deal of confidence until it escaped and then of course it was ‘oh my goodness,’” Covington said.

That’s when wind gusts swirled and the fire raged out of control, scorching 600-year-old trees and jumping the only paved road to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Hundreds of visitors were trapped. Park service officials, firefighters and police led people on a web of forest roads out of the smoke to safety.

“When a fire like this escapes and burns severely, it causes a lot of second guessing a lot of what were you thinking of how could you let this happen,” Covington said. “There’s always risk involved. But the controversy was pretty bitter for several years after that. And you know it looks like a bombed out landscape.”

About 59,000 acres burned, two-thirds of the area severely. After the blaze was out, fire managers and scientists assessed the damage. Martha Hahn who directed the Grand Canyon Trust at the time, said the Warm Fire became a cautionary tale.

“A lot was learned,” Hahn said. “In a sense it was a great motivator. Fire managers said, ‘Woah, we don’t want something like this happening in the park, can you imagine?’ So they wanted to go in and burn burn burn to try to lessen the fuel load. But that’s where the scientists waved caution and said, ‘Wait a minute. Don’t do it as fast and large as you want to do it.’ So there was some tension.”

Scientists were concerned about soil erosion and endangered species. Today visitors to the North Rim can see tall native plants and aspens have sprouted up. Deer, birds and other wildlife have come back.

Dry forests cover much of the western United States. They’ve been allowed to grow dense because of decades of heavy fire suppression. One lightning strike or human error and they quickly become a catastrophic fire.

“This becomes extremely important in the face of climate change where there’s higher temperatures, longer fire seasons, more severe winds associated with these fronts that come through,” Covington said. “We’re set up for fires that we call 'megafires' that are devastating that burn hundreds of thousands of acres.”

Fire officials won’t stop managing fires for resource benefits any time soon. And some will likely escape their boundaries like the Warm Fire did. But Wally Covington said the alternative — a megafire — is much worse.

Laurel Morales was a Fronteras Desk senior field correspondent in Flagstaff from 2011 to 2020.