Arizona’s governor calls for federal investigation into National Park Service’s handling of the fire, which was sparked in early July
A wildfire raging along the Grand Canyon’s North Rim that leveled a historic lodge erupted over the weekend after burning for more than a week, raising scrutiny over the National Park Service’s decision not to aggressively attack the fire right away.
Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s governor, called for a federal investigation into the park service’s handling of the fire, which was sparked by lightning on 4 July.
“Arizonans deserve answers for how this fire was allowed to decimate the Grand Canyon National Park,” the governor said in a social media post on Sunday. “The federal government chose to manage that fire as a controlled burn during the driest, hottest part of the Arizona summer.”
Authorities first used a “confine and contain” strategy by clearing fuel sources, but shifted to aggressive suppression as the fire rapidly grew to nearly 8 square miles (20.7 sq km) because of hot temperatures, low humidity and strong wind gusts, fire officials said.
The fire destroyed the Grand Canyon Lodge, the only lodging inside the park’s North Rim, along with cabins, employee housing and a waste water treatment plant, the park superintendent, Ed Keable, said on Sunday.
Park officials have closed access for the rest of the year to the North Rim, a less popular and more isolated area of the park that draws only about 10% of the Grand Canyon’s millions of annual visitors.
