Sept. 13, 2024: Fire grows to 12,000 acres
On Friday morning, the Siphon Fire had grown rapidly to 12,000 acres with no containment.
Susan Blake is with the Tonto National Forest. She says much of the fire is in rugged terrain.
"For the safety of firefighters we don’t want them to enter in that kind of terrain but we do have areas where engine crews are, where they’re conducting burnout operations to slow the fire."
Air tankers have been used to slow the fire’s growth.
SR88 is closed past Lost Dutchman State Park.
Sept. 12, 2024: Evacuations in place
Canyon Lake and Tortilla Flat were under an evacuation order Thursday morning for the Siphon Fire, according to a U.S. Forest Service news release.
The blaze northeast of Apache Junction was reported Tuesday and has burned 2,350 acres. It was at zero percent containment on Thursday afternoon.
Motorists should avoid the Superstition wilderness area, State Route 88 and Forest Road 78.
Fire officials said rugged terrain was making the blaze harder to access. The cause of the fire was still under investigation.
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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." -
Data analyzed by the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters shows that prescribed fires and other hazardous fuel reduction efforts have fallen by nearly 40% across the West this year.
