HOW A 'GOOD FIRE' WENT BAD IN GRAND CANYON

A miscalculation let a small blaze roar out of control, drawing scrutiny to strategy

- By Jack Dolan

SMOKE rises from Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona on Aug. 12. The fire now exceeds 145,000 acres.

When lightning sparked a small fire amid the stately ponderosa pines on the remote North Rim of the Grand Canyon last month, national park officials treated it like a good thing.

Instead of racing to put the fire out immediately, as was the practice for decades, they deferred to the doctrines of modern fire science. The prevailing wisdom says the American West was forged by flames that nourish the soil and naturally reduce the supply of dry fuels.

So officials built containment lines to keep the fire away from people and the park's historic buildings and then stepped back to let the flames perform their ancient magic.

That strategy worked well — until it didn’t. A week later, the wind suddenly increased and the modest, 120-acre controlled burn exploded into a “megafire,” the largest in the United States so far this year. As of Saturday, the blaze had burned more than 145,000 acres and was 63% contained.

“The fire jumped our lines on Friday, July 11,” said a still shaken parks employee who was on the front line that day and asked not to be named for fear of official retaliation. "By 3 in the afternoon, crews were struggling to hold it," the employee said through a hacking cough, attributing it to smoke inhaled that chaotic day.

"By 9 p.m., there was nothing we could do. Embers were raining down everywhere and everything that could burn was burning," the employee added.

Whether the Dragon Bravo fire's escape from confinement was due to a colossal mistake, incredibly bad luck, or some tragic combination of the two will be the focus of multiple investigations.