Arizona senators demand responses from the Department of the Interior on their handling of a devastating forest fire that is still out of control on the northern edge of the Grand Canyon.
In a letter sent on Monday to the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly questioned the initial response of the department to Dragon Bravo fire. The fire spread rapidly over the weekend and destroyed dozens of structures, including the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, a visiting center and a wastewater treatment plant.
“It has been reported that national parks service officials initially decided to monitor the fire as a controlled burn, but changed their approach since the strong winds allowed the fire to jump multiple features of containment,” the senators wrote in the letter. “There are many questions about the initial decision to treat this fire as a controlled burn and subsequent decisions about how to answer.”
Neither the National Parks Service nor the Department of the Interior immediately responded to the requests for comments.
The governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, requested an independent investigation into the federal response on Sunday, particularly the decision to “administer that fire as a burn controlled during the dry and most popular part of Arizona’s summer,” he said in a position in X.
“An incident of this magnitude demands intense supervision and scrutiny in the emergency response of the federal government,” Hobbs wrote. “First they must take aggressive measures to put an end to the forest fire and avoid more damage. But Arizonans deserve answers on how this fire was allowed to tithe the National Park of the Grand Canyon.”
Until Monday, the fire had consumed more than 5,700 acres and remained in 0% content, according to Inciweb, the forest fire information site of the United States forest service.
Gallego and Kelly said they were concerned that the first decisions of the federal government “may have affected the spread of fire in northern Arizona”, particularly since the northern edge has been less than weeks of extreme heat and experienced a dry winter.
The senators asked Burgum to detail the factors that contributed to the initial decision to treat the fire as a controlled burn.
Controlled burns are fires that are intentionally established or allowed to reduce the amount of dry and flammable vegetation in an area. This type of burns are used to control ecosystems that need periodic fires to stay healthy and also to reduce the risk of breaking larger forest fires.
Gallego and Kelly called Gran Canyon “Arizona’s Crown Jewel” and asked about the resources available to fight the forest fire. They also questioned how the interior department plans to prevent other fires from spreading. The senators requested answers before August 10.
Lightning began the Fire Dragon Bravo on July 4. The National Parks Service said Sunday that the fire “exhibited an extreme and volatile fire behavior on the night of July 12, which resulted in an expansion of 500 acres.” The rapid expansion of fire was fed by sustained winds of 20 mph and bursts that reach up to 40 mph, according to the NPS.
The early evaluations suggest that between 50 and 80 structures have been lost, but so far no injuries or deaths have been informed.
A separate and larger glow known as the Blanco Sabio fire is also burning north of the fire of the brave dragon. The Sage White fire has consumed more than 49,000 acres and is also contained in 0%, according to Inciweb.
