tunnel fire

Officials with the Coconino National Forest say they’ve reduced the size of the closure area for the Tunnel Fire northeast of Flagstaff. The move is meant to allow for increased access and recreation in Lockett Meadow and the inner basin via Forest Road 552.

Two small areas of the Tunnel Fire near Flagstaff reignited over the weekend. Strong winds fanned flames in the higher-elevation cinder cones area through unburned fuel within the fire’s perimeter creating visible smoke.

Until last month, the most recent major wildfires to impact the Flagstaff area had miraculously spared homes. The 2010 Schultz Fire and the Museum Fire in 2019 burned a combined 17,000 acres almost exclusively on national forest land north of the city. That all changed with the wind-driven Tunnel Fire last month, which burned 30 homes in the Timberline area. On yet another recent gusty day, Coconino County Deputy Manager Lucinda Andreani showed KNAU’s Ryan Heinsius one home in a wooded area that was destroyed by the Tunnel Fire, and spoke about where residents, many of whom lost everything, go from here.

Nearly all evacuation orders have been lifted for the Crooks Fire burning in the Bradshaw Mountains south of Prescott. An Emergency Response Team has completed a Soil Burn Severity Map for the Tunnel Fire. Crews are conducting mop up operations on the Antelope Fire north of Sunset Crater near Flagstaff.

As the Tunnel Fire nears full containment, teams of scientists are assessing its impact and have completed a map showing that more than two-thirds of soils burned at low severity.

The Crooks Fire burning near Prescott is now 83% contained at just over 9,400 acres. Many evacuations have been lifted. Tunnel Fire is close to full containment.

Despite critical fire weather this weekend and winds in excess of 50 mph, firefighters gained more containment of wildfires burning in northern Arizona.

The Tunnel Fire burned through Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and headed north toward the edge of Wupatki National Monument, through a woodland of pinyon-juniper trees. That region experienced a dramatic die-off of junipers in the last few years. Before the fire, National Park Service staff partnered with NASA to map the dead trees using satellite images. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny spoke with ecologist Nicole Ramberg-Pihl, a member of the NASA team, about their findings.

U.S. Forest Service officials say they’ll implement stage 1 fire restrictions beginning Thu, May 5 across the entire Coconino National Forest as well as the southern portion of the Kaibab National Forest and the City of Flagstaff.

Coconino County officials say communities along the Highway 89 corridor have been downgraded from SET status to READY status for evacuation related to the Tunnel Fire. This includes communities north of Flagstaff, from Campbell Avenue to the north entrance of Forest Service Road 545 (Wupatki National Monument).