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.

[xsproutx]

@chumley
I don't know, the quote is basically, "If we put it out, it probably wouldn't have burned that stuff." Seems they''re still not sure.

[Jim]

The original linked SF Gate article tells readers the official investigation into the Dragon Bravo is on going.

An ongoing investigation into the Dragon Bravo wildfire, which was first demanded by Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, may eventually reveal the answer.

The statements in this article were taken from senate hearings on the Dept of the Interior's budget.

[ youtube video ] 1:32:37 is when Dragon Bravo is mentioned. Senate

[ youtube video ] 48:30 is around when the Dragon Bravo is mentioned. House.

Sec Burgum makes similar talking point statements to the Senate and House, both when prompted by fellow Republicans in support of the Administration's creation of a new $4 billion agency, which is what this hearing was really about.
https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/depar ... -modernize

Others feel that there could, possibly, just maybe, be other reasons why things happened.

conservationists are pointing at problems that President Donald Trump’s administration created when it reduced the staff of the Park Service by nearly 25%, and they’re questioning whether brain drain at the agency might have been a factor.

Of course, I'm sure we all remember the post about fire fighters being moved to the White Sage just as they were about to light a containment line to establish permitter for the Dragon Bravo.
[ Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim, Drago ... pansion ]

"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,..."

The thread is well established with discussions and questions over such subjects as why the fire wasn't changed from managed to suppression, why there was no apparent defensible space or fire wise construction (fire resistant materials of design) for burned structures. Numerous people wondered if less than qualified people were running the fire, and a spin off thread was even started to discuss the race and sexual orientation of those involved.

BTW, for the Senate hearing, timestamp 1:34:05 is when Burgum says there is an order (executive order from project 2025?) for full suppression this year. I had read that P 2025 was to have EOs dictating 100% full suppression all the time.

Uh sometimes we've had land managers that feel like they've been underfunded in terms of of fuel load management, and so they'll let a fire burn uh you know, in a national park or in a wildlife refuge. they'll let it burn thinking like, "Oh, I can manage some of my fuel load." And then it turns out to those fires like we saw last year at uh Dragon Bravo where we ended up losing the North Rim Lodge in the in the in the Grand Canyon National Park.

Notice he frames it only as a fuel issue. This of course ignores ecology. He makes no mention of resources being diverted, when there was already an large Interagency command structure in place for fires and has been for 6 decades.

https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/depar ... -modernize

Decades of insufficient forest management - such as fuel build-up, invasive species spread and delayed treatments - have created conditions where wildfires burn hotter, faster and more destructively.

I would love to know how people think something like fuel build-up is going to be mitigated, removed, or otherwise managed.