The burn and the blame

Finger-pointing doesn't fight fires ... Hackers gonna hack ... And we miss the old cartoonist.

On again.

Off again.

On again.

That’s the tragic history of the U.S. government’s fitful, ineffectual effort to reverse a century of mismanagement that has turned six million acres of Arizona forests into a tinderbox.

So grab a seat, because odds are it’s going to happen again in the wake of the Dragon Bravo Fire, which jumped containment lines and destroyed the iconic, 90-year-old Grand Canyon Lodge.

Just about everybody’s calling for an investigation into how the slow-moving fire survived long enough for predictable monsoon winds to turn it into a monster that ultimately consumed most of the buildings on the North Rim and closed that portion of the park for the balance of the summer.

And these calls for an investigation from Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, bipartisan members of Congress and others perfectly underscore the politically fraught effort to alter forest management in the new era of megafires.

The Dragon Bravo Fire started with a pre-monsoon flash of lightning on July 4 on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The separate White Sage Fire started near Fredonia from another lightning strike on July 9.

The National Park Service initially released reassuring social media posts suggesting fire crews would concentrate on creating fire lines that would allow the fire to burn within a certain area. In the right conditions, a naturally caused, managed fire can consume debris on the forest floor and thickets of tree saplings — leaving the forest in better shape overall.

In recent years, the Forest Service and the National Park Service have increasingly used managed fires in a desperate attempt to restore the fire-adapted ponderosa pine forest that once covered much of Northern Arizona.

In fact, the embrace of a long-term policy of managing fires rather than instantly suppressing them on the North Rim produced the stunning, old-growth ponderosa forest at Fire Point. This stand of widely spaced, 800-year-old ponderosa is something of a model for restoration of the whole forest.

For about 10 days, the National Park Service deployed a relative handful of firefighters to contain the Dragon Bravo Fire, hoping it would thin the overgrown forest and consume tons of deadwood and biomass that has accumulated on each acre.

But on July 12, everything changed. Pre-monsoon storm systems swept into the area on a blast of 40-mile-per-hour winds but little rain. The Dragon Bravo Fire quickly jumped the containment lines and raced towards the historic Grand Canyon Lodge and 70 other buildings, devastating the facilities on the North Rim.

Elected officials called for investigations into the initial management of the fire. The National Park Service quickly issued new descriptions of the initial response, saying the fire managers on Day One adopted a full-suppression strategy and that the fire was “expertly managed” from Day One.

The pattern’s all too familiar to fire ecology experts like ASU professor Stephen Pyne, author of books like “The Pyrocene.”

Decades ago, the Forest Service recognized that a century of logging, grazing and all-out fire suppression had increased tree densities across millions of acres of Northern Arizona from about 50 per acre to more like 1,000 per acre. As a result, big, fire-resistant old-growth ponderosa pines had been replaced by thickets of flammable saplings.

And frequent low-intensity fires have given way to megafires.

Moreover, construction of homes and towns in the most fire-prone landscapes has exploded in recent decades. Most of those communities lack fire-hardened building codes and Firewise brush clearing codes – leaving them painfully vulnerable.

The solution, ecologists soon learned, was to create a small-tree timber industry, set prescribed burns and let carefully managed natural burns — like the Dragon Bravo Fire was supposed to be — restore the natural fire regime.

However, Pyne also documented the long history of managed fires that escaped control, consumed structures and claimed the lives of both firefighters and civilians. After each fire escape, the Forest Service backed away from managed fires – sometimes for years.

For instance, after a series of devastating fires in California in 2024, the US Forest Service announced it would stop prescribed burns “for the foreseeable future,” citing increasing extreme fire conditions and staff shortages. The decision threatened to undo years of progress in reducing extreme fire risk, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

And the federal Government Accountability Office launched an investigation into how embers left behind after a prescribed burn in New Mexico triggered the Hermits Peak Fire, which charred 340,000 acres and became the largest wildfire in state history.

The Forest Service in New Mexico halted prescribed burns and managed fire in response, at least temporarily.

If history is any guide, in the wake of the Dragon Bravo Fire, the conversation will once again turn toward curtailing the use of managed fires and controlled burns.

But that only allows more fuel to build up as we swelter through the worst drought in 1,200 years.

A GAO report last year noted that fewer than 1% of prescribed fires and managed fires escape control. Therefore, it recommended a series of reforms to better manage those fires, including addressing staffing needs and establishing outcome-oriented performance measures.

Instead, the Forest Service has made huge staffing cuts in the last six months.

Republicans blame the Biden administration for the tragedy. Democrats blame Donald Trump’s interior secretary.

But if the result of all the political finger-pointing is to once again waver in our attempts to use good fires to stop bad ones, then the cycle will continue — on again, off again — until the next lodge burns.

The breach’s been upgraded: Arizona cybersecurity officials think the pro-Iranian hackers who changed candidate photos on the secretary of state’s website tried to get into other state and local government servers, per Votebeat’s Jen Fifield. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ office wants the state to immediately hand out $10 million to prevent future attacks. Meanwhile, Arizona cybersecurity chief Ryan Murray thinks the hack was a direct response to the U.S. bombing Iran's nuclear sites in June, he told 12 News’ Brahm Resnik.

Racing ahead: Perennial candidate Rodney Glassman is crushing Warren Petersen in fundraising for the GOP nomination in the Arizona attorney general race, Capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports. Glassman raised $2.4 million (including $1 million of his own money), far more than Petersen’s $190,000 (alongside $200,000 from previous campaigns). Meanwhile, Attorney General Kris Mayes has $1.1 million for her re-election bid.

A drop in the bucket: Deer Valley school board member Kim Fisher says she is returning $20,000 in unspent school voucher money, 12News’ Craig Harris reports. Arizona parents still have about $444 million in unspent voucher money. Some of them, including Fisher, say it’s legitimate to hold onto that money to pay for college. Over the past three years, about $700,000 in voucher money has gone toward college.

$20,000 is a drop in the bucket of the entire school voucher system, but we’d be thrilled with just a percentage of that. And we went to public school!

Getting out of the kitchen: Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren walked out of a meeting with council members, saying he didn’t want discussions to be “derailed by the same delegates, using their same disgraceful tactics,” KJZZ’s Michel Marizco reports. Nygren is taking some heat for signing an agreement with a Mesa microhome builder that shut down shortly after the Nation’s legislators launched an investigation of the deal.

Shadow campaign: Somebody is trying to put the kibosh on Tempe residents who are gathering signatures to overturn a controversial ordinance that limits help for unsheltered people, the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L’Heureux reports. The people trying to squelch the campaign work for Groundswell Contact, a political outreach firm, and they’re passing out incendiary flyers and trying to convince people not to sign the petition. Nobody is saying who is paying those Groundswell workers, but one of them mentioned they’re working for “someone that supports the city council.”

Sexts and geese: Arizona’s local governments are starting to act on new state laws, and Kingman wants to expand the state’s new backyard poultry rule to include ducks and geese, per the Kingman Miner’s Michael Zogg. And in Gila County, the Payson Unified School District board adopted a cell phone use policy requiring students to keep their phones away during the school day since a new state law requires school districts to adopt cell phone use rules, the Payson Roundup’s Peter Aleshire reports. Payson’s new policy also bans “sexting” during school hours.

In need of more intel: The Chandler City Council is deadlocked over what to do about water rates, and the elephant in the room is Intel, the Daily Independent’s Jason W. Brooks reports. The council members don’t know how Intel executives would react to the water rate options the council is considering, especially as the tech giant gets ready to ramp up its own high-tech water treatment and reclamation process.

On Tuesday, we asked you readers to weigh in on the cuts to public media.

And y’all showed up.

We had a great time arguing talking with the commenters, who had a lot of smart takes on the topic.

Whenever we ask you questions, we learn something new and see perspectives we hadn’t considered. So we’re going to try to get you all to chime in more often.

But first, what did our readers say about the massive cuts to PBS and NPR?

Let’s dive into a few of our favorites.

---

Reader Liana Garcia is a huge NPR fan, but she thinks the left-of-center news organization will ultimately be better off without federal funding.

“…At the end of the day, I think it's better for NPR and for taxpayers to separate NPR from federal funding. They can focus on producing news and won't be a political football. They'll obviously still have to deal with the tantrums of this administration — which just basically dislikes ‘news’ writ large. But it was only a matter of time until their federal funding disappeared. I love your thoughts about a golden age of independent journalism and it's so true. Some of the best journalism and thought pieces are on Substack (also on YouTube podcast channels!).”

Reader Bob Dalpe thinks of it as more of a coastal bias from New York elites.

“…NPR hasn’t helped themselves in some of their broadcasting as they tend to echo the culture of the coasts. I am originally from Boston and a big fan of NPR but they don’t always show the culture of midAmerica and like the last election, some people might get tired of being told they are not quite so smart. It will hurt the rural communities but what does a New York developer who thinks Westchester County is far flung rural know about anything outside of his world?”

Reader Gettaway Gal was less forgiving, arguing even the mode of delivery — radio — is outdated and that continuing to subsidize the “demonstrably biased NPR” is a waste of resources in the internet age.

“…I will never understand why progressives seem to invariably end up being Luddites — instead of embracing change that allows you to compete and succeed based on your own merits at delivering information, you are arguing in favor of maintaining a media apparatus equivalent to the horse and buggy era of transportation. Personally, given the plethora of choices in today’s media environment, I spend far more time than I want to admit taking in a vast range of information (and, yes, entertainment), that allows me to process (at the age of 72) a previously unimaginable range of perspectives and information. I have said this before but welcome to the 21st-century — you can either adapt and thrive or wither on the vine.”

Reader Garrick reminds us that while, yes, we are “beholden” to our readers, we shouldn’t take that too literally.

“…That word beholden could be a trap. As a subscriber, I’d urge you to always be wary of audience capture. If you calibrate your coverage solely around what you think your audience wants, then you risk becoming a sunnier Fox News or like a tired columnist who only plays their hits because they’re so worried about pissing off their readers.”

Fellow Substacker Cathy Sigmon of Civic Engagement Beyond Voting (subscribe if you don’t already!) noted that while Substack has helped fuel this “golden era” of independent journalism, it is still a very regrettable platform.

“Sadly, Substack is losing a significant amount of independence and objectivity with a $100M investment by private equity/venture capital. Investors include right-wing tech bro and Trump acolyte Marc Andreessen. Not that Substack was a nirvana before, with its refusal to stop Nazi propagandists from establishing bases here. Next step?”

And while we were focused on the impact on news, Chris Elsner reminds us that PBS is not only educating us adults, but it’s one of the few places where kids can sit in front of a screen without advertisers attempting to sell them something.

“As a parent, one of the things I appreciate most is the programming provided by PBS Kids. PBS has demonstrated through decades of service that they approach such programing thoughtfully with an eye to childhood development and education. When my kids watch PBS kids, I know that what they're watching is at a minimum educational and appropriate. The same can not be said for a lot of other kid programming which is much more focused on engagement through cheap entertainment, usually to sell or market a product/service.”

The Arizona Capitol Times published its annual “Session Wrap” edition with its beloved Mad Magazine-style character illustration cover.

This year’s cover is, well, uhhh, this…

Rather than dwell on our artistic critique, we’d like you to tag yourself as the character you most identify with.

Intern Alysa will go first: She’s the unidentifiable lady crying in the lower left quadrant surrounded by papers.

Pop into the comments section to claim your spirit politician!