Arizona senators press Trump official on Grand Canyon wildfire response
The Senators of Arizona require responses from the interior department of its manipulation of a devastating forest fire which still burns out of control on the north edge of the Grand Canyon.
In a letter sent to the interior secretary Doug Burgum on Monday, the democratic senses Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly questioned the initial response of the Department au Dragon Bravo. The fire quickly spread over weekends and destroyed dozens of structures, including the Historic Grand Canyon Lodge, a reception center and a wastewater treatment plant.
“It was reported that the officials of the National Parks Service initially decided to monitor the fire as a controlled burn, but changed their approach because the strong winds allowed the fire to jump several confinement characteristics,” the senators wrote in the letter. “There are many questions about the initial decision to deal with this fire as a controlled burn and subsequent decisions about how to react.”
Neither the National Park Service nor the Ministry of the Interior immediately responded to requests for comments.
The governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, a democrat, called on Sunday to an independent investigation into the federal response, in particular the decision to “manage this fire as a controlled burn during the dry and hottest part of the Arizona summer”, she said in an article on X.
“An incident of this magnitude requires intense surveillance and a meticulous examination of the emergency response of the federal government,” wrote Hobbs. “They must first take aggressive measures to put an end to forest fires and avoid other damage. But the Arizonans deserve answers on how this fire was authorized to decimate the Grand Canyon National Park. ”
On Monday, the fire had consumed more than 5,700 acres and remained at 0% content, according to Inciweb, the US Forest Service Forest Fire Fire Fire Site.
Gallego and Kelly said they feared that the first decisions of the federal government “may have affected the spread of fire in northern Arizona”, especially since the North edge was in extreme heat and has 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 fixed or authorized to burn to reduce the amount of dry and flammable vegetation in an area. These types of burns are used to manage ecosystems that require periodic fires to stay healthy and also to reduce the risk of larger breakup fires.
Gallego and Kelly called the Grand Canyon “Arizona’s Crown Jewel” and asked questions about the resources available to fight forest fires. They also asked how the interior department plans to prevent other flames from spreading. The senators asked for answers by August 10.
Dragon Bravo’s fire was launched by lightning on July 4. The National Park Service said on Sunday that the fire “had an extreme and volatile shooting behavior on the evening of July 12, causing an expansion of 500 acres”. The rapid expansion of the fire was powered by sustained winds of 20 MPH and gusts reaching up to 40 MPH, according to NP.
The first evaluations suggest that between 50 and 80 structures have been lost, but no injury or death has been reported so far.
A separate and larger fire known as white sage fire also burns north of the fire Dragon Bravo. Sage White’s fire consumed more than 49,000 acres and is also 0%contained, according to Inciweb.
