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

[chumley]

In a Senate committee hearing yesterday, Interior Secretary Bergum undermined GCNP Superintendent Keable's prior statements that the fire was always under a full-suppression strategy.

At the center of that query was the initial fire management strategy employed by national park officials. And, confusingly, what park leaders communicated about that strategy conflicted with the park’s own social media posts. Leaders said the park used a “full suppression” strategy from the beginning. But social media posts reported an initial “confine and contain strategy,” which allows a fire to continue burning a defined area.

In a Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum weighed in on the discrepancy for the first time, affirming the information shared on the park’s social media accounts and undermining the credibility of Grand Canyon’s superintendent and park spokesperson.

“Last year at Dragon Bravo, where we ended up losing the North Rim Lodge in the Grand Canyon National Park ... in retrospect, an approach of suppression versus containment might have saved hundreds of millions of dollars of historic properties,” Burgum said

https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/a ... 220798.php

[big_load]

Given what the fuel conditions were, would it really have mattered which approach were taken?

[chumley]

Given what the fuel conditions were, would it really have mattered which approach were taken?

Given that a relatively small naturally ignited fire was allowed to burn for 8 days without suppression before it exploded toward the developed areas of the north rim, I think a reasonable argument can be made that it may have mattered.