Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim, Dragon Bravo expansion

[azbackpackr]

(July 27 Edit, changed headline to reflect development of fire.)
Grand Canyon Lodge at North Rim burned last night, and over the last 24 hours also the visitor center, cabins, Administration center, backpacking permit office, and numerous employee houses were burned. I heard that the mules survived and that nobody died. It'll be all over the news.
https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-i ... bravo-fire

[Jim]

If you think that (the part about hazardous materials) is bad, you should be interested in the recent story I watched about the USFS not only not supplying respirators to their fire crews, but actually prohibiting their use by their crews over "productivity concerns", while cancer and death rates are very high in individuals only in their 30s and 40s, for those who are or were fire personnel. No mention of cigarette smoking rates for those people. However, seems moot since you get all sorts of warnings about fire smoke for the public, yet it is strange that people on the front would be prohibited from using respirators when they have direct exposure to smoke.

[ youtube video ]


Oh, and didn't I say that gusty winds at the GCNP being rare was complete BS, back in mid-July?

[ShatteredArm]

@RedRoxx44
Watch Duty still has the original reporting:

July 9 (five days after the fire started) -

The fire is located south of the Basin near the W1 Road and continues to be managed for resource benefit objectives using a confine/contain strategy. This means the fire is being allowed to fulfill its natural role within a defined area, while firefighters take action to limit its spread where necessary. There are no threats to infrastructure or public safety at this time.

July 12 (the day after evacuation notices started) -

As of 11:30 a.m. on July 12, the fire is estimated at 5,000 acres. In response to increased fire activity and proximity to developed areas, the strategy has shifted to full suppression focused on the North Rim developed area.

Strangely, the inciweb page doesn't seem to have anything before 7/14. Curious!

[hikeaz]

The fire was merely 10 acres by July 7 and 27 acres by July 8, according to Grand Canyon National Park social media posts. Spin as they might to project that it was 'well managed' the facts do not seem on their side.

[Jim]

The fire was merely 10 acres by July 7 and 27 acres by July 8, according to Grand Canyon National Park social media posts. Spin as they might to project that it was 'well managed' the facts do not seem on their side.

This seems like an incomplete post. Are you saying that you want them to suppress fire all the time, and anything other than full suppression, is mismanagement?

Also, I'm not asking this to troll you, I'm just seeking to understand your meaning.

Oh, to be clear, fires are managed according to the park management plan and by the incident commander of the management team that has authority over the fire, not the park administrators and or park superintendent. Pretending that a park super is doing so is, well, just absurd. Silly, actually. Comically so, demonstrating a level of ignorance beyond comprehension for anyone that has followed fire. This is why on fire websites, like inciweb, you'll see things like:

Incident Commander: Clinton Gould IC, CIIMT9, Jim Snow deputy, Jeff Crandall

who is the current person in charge. You do not see the park superintendent listed.

[hikeaz]

@Jim
I think 'managed/prescribed' burns should be well-planned, which includes, among other considerations choosing an apt season for them as well as the best low-wind, cool forecast. This fire cause was 'natural' but that is no reason to think July is the best time to 'let-er-rip'. Seems that it should be cheaper and simpler to extinguish a relatively small fire and then PLAN a good time to perform the 'cleansing' fire.
But like the NPS spokesperson said +/-.. 'No lives were lost.. and we can build another lodge*'. (* Spoken like someone who has never been there)

[Jim]

@hikeaz That's fine. There isn't anything to suggest that the fire was mismanaged from those acreages and dates, though. Not purely on that information alone. As Jason Nez indicated in his quoted social media post, posted here around page 2, prescribed fires are well planned and take years to execute. A managed wildfire obvious can not be, if it relies on unpredictable lightning strikes.

Should this fire have been suppressed at 10 acres? The weather on this incident changed from July back to June pretty fast. I wasn't there, wasn't following this very closely until I received a PM about it on the day this thread was started, and I don't know if I have the full fire history of the area to the NW of the village, so don't really have a strong opinion on it around July 8. Maybe by the 10th or 11th, and with the White Sage going on, yes, it should have been.

Jason also stated that they lost resources to the White Sage. I am surprised that it wasn't switched to full suppression earlier, especially with the White Sage going on the 10th. Maybe those resources wouldn't have been diverted if it was a full suppression fire. Assuming it wasn't, at that point ( I don't have the date for when Jason says resources were diverted).

[chumley]

There isn't anything to suggest that the fire was mismanaged from those acreages and dates, though

I'll posit that there are 145,000+ acres of burned forest, more than 50 structures destroyed, a regional economic engine decimated, plus as-yet-unknown impacts to critical watersheds in one of this country's most iconic national parks as SOMETHING that might suggest that the fire was mismanaged. It didn't start on Day 7. It started on Day 1.

[chumley]

Caution!! 1000% Nerd Trap!

Attached is the archive of daily weather forecast discussions published by the Flagstaff office of the National Weather Service for northern Arizona from July 4 to July 12, 2025. The discussion covers the northern Arizona forecast area, which includes the Kaibab Plateau and north rim of Grand Canyon. It provides a fairly detailed account of the conditions as they were at the time, upcoming forecasts, temperatures, winds, and fire fuels.

If you are not having trouble sleeping, I do not recommend looking at this!

[Jim]

If the public was more rational, and the NPS had the resources, perhaps this sort of thing would not have happened the way it did as the forest between the fire origin and the lodge would have been actively managed, both making it easier to have a managed wildfire and suppress when it became riskier with the wind increases and humidity drop.

More specifically, the lodge/village/ developed area south of the narrow peninsula roughly at 36.2209, -112.065006.

[Alston_Neal]

I keep thinking of our camping trip to Anderson Mesa in May. A lightning caused fire was close enough to where we were to camp concerning us due to Deb's asthma. Chums posted up a link to what was to be the Blind Fire. The Blind Fire was a 5,500 acre prescribed fire in May. The lightning struck fire was close enough to be included in the planned burn. The reason I bring this up was the rancher and the fire crews we talked to said the fire was a year in the planning and the fire crews were so large they included out of state personel. it was an immense operation and the out of state crews meant they were not needed at the time in their state. Everything was ideal for that time period. July on the other hand was completely different and compared to the planning and personel of the Blind Fire the Canyon was like an after thought.

[Jim]

@Alston_Neal
[ Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim, Drago ... pansion ]

From an NPS firefighter buddy who was working on the Dragon Bravo fire -
"Im here on the ground, we were about to contain it by burning off the roads but lost our resources to the White Sage fire and didn't have enough personnel, damn anyone that says this was prescribed. We plan these things based on long term forecasts, which for the past 1000 years show monsoon rains this time of year... theres no rain even though it should be raining by now"

No idea when that was posted to some type of media mistakenly referred to as social, but at some point from July 5 to the 12th(?) or 13th(?), resources were diverted. I think resources were probably not taken from the DB fire by the 12th, and possibly even by the 11th. I think this because why would you divert resources to the White Sage when the north rim village was burning, or the fire was starting to get out of hand? Bad move, if they did. That isn't a decision made by the Incident Commander on a fire, that is made regionally, and the White Sage fire behavior had a lot to do with that.

If you look a the pdf progression map for the white sage, it blew up on the 10th. Unless someone can tell us when Jason Nez posted the quoted message above, good chance he's talking about the 10th. Map linked below:

https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-m ... ire?page=1

If anyone has the figures for total personnel for the days leading up to the 12th, when the lodge burned, it would be interesting to see what they had on hand.