Fire officials told community members in northern Arizona on Wednesday that intensely dry conditions and strong winds are making the Dragon Bravo Fire on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim hard to manage.
The fire has burned an area nearly the size of Tucson at more than 200 square miles. Officials compared the dryness of trees in the fire’s path to that of the two-by-fours you buy at Home Depot. And they warned that high level particle smoke is putting residents at risk. Then there’s the lack of water.
John Truett is the fire’s incident commander.
"Right now we have almost 50 water tenders, you know the big water trucks, trying to shuttle water to keep up with the demand," he said.
Truett said a pipeline from the Roaring Springs Pumphouse was damaged by the fire so water is being trucked in.
"Now we’re going up to Lees Ferry, all the way up to Fredonia to bring water up," he said.
Local springs, as well, aren't recharging fast enough to help.
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Brian Fennessy has nearly 50 years of fire experience, which began in the late 1970s on elite federal hotshot crews and other wildfire teams. -
A group of mostly Western U.S. senators is demanding answers on why the U.S. Forest Service has fallen behind on efforts to reduce hazardous wildfire fuels. -
A group of U.S. senators say the Forest Service has fallen behind in wildfire prevention work like forest thinning which has been deemed vital to preventing billions of dollars of damage to regions in Arizona surrounded by national forests. -
Senate Democrats have asked Senate leadership to fund recovery from wildfires on federal lands. -
The Healthy Lungs for Heroes Act was introduced by Democratic California Senator Adam Schiff and Republican Utah Senator John Curtis. If passed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal officials would have one year to develop a plan to make "commercially available appropriate respiratory personal protective equipment for wildland firefighters and supporting staff in settings in which smoke exposure surpasses covered permissible exposure limits."
