Pima County sheriff’s deputies went door to door in Santa Catalina Mountains overlooking Tucson on Thursday to notify residents of an expansion of the evacuation area threatened by a wildfire.
The Sheriff's Office said the Bighorn Fire’s evacuation area on Mount Lemmon was expanded Thursday, to include Willow Canyon. It wasn’t immediately known how many homes were affected.
According to the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, residents in the Peppersauce Canyon to Highkinks Road/Camp Bonito area of Oracle were also told to evacuate today.
The lightning-caused Bighorn Fire is nearly 24,000 acres and was 40% contained as of Thursday.
Other major fires continued to grow in in the Kaibab National Forest north of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona and in east-central Arizona in the Tonto National Forest northeast of metro Phoenix. All three fires have caused evacuation of rural communities and partial or full closures of several highways.
