This week, the head of the National Park Service told Congress that mismanagement likely allowed last year’s Dragon Bravo Fire to burn out of control on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that crews had let the fire burn to diminish fuels.
“Sometimes we have land managers that feel like they have been underfunded in terms of fuel load management and so they’ll let a fire burn in a national park or in a wildlife refuge, they’ll let it burn thinking like, ‘oh I can manage some of my fuel load,'" Burgum said.
Early statements said the fire was being allowed to burn for quote “resource objectives.” After almost 10 days, crews said they started working to put out the fire.
Burgum said the management decisions led to significant losses.
"In retrospect an approach of suppression versus containment might have saved hundreds of millions of dollars of historic properties," Burgum said.
It took about three months before the fire was contained.
As a result, it burned more than 145,000 acres and decimated over a hundred structures, including the historic Grand Canyon Lodge.
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Arizona Public Service has nearly 40 active AI smoke-detection cameras and plans to have 71 by summer's end, and the state’s fire agency has deployed seven of its own. -
Smoke from the fire near Buckeye has blown into the rest of the Valley since it started burning Saturday. -
Kathleen Muldoon is a professor at an Arizona medical school who lives in north Peoria not too far from where the Hazen wildfire is burning. And she has Valley fever. -
The fire is generating a lot of fine particulate matter which could worsen health outcomes for people with respiratory issues. -
The Hazen Fire is burning about a mile south of Buckeye residential areas and is bordering State Route 85. As of Tuesday afternoon it stood at 1049 acres and reached 10% containment overnight.
