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The Grand Canyon park has decided to close its north bank (North Rim) to tourists for the rest of the 2025 season, due to a fire that destroyed several dozen buildings in the area.
“The north shore will remain closed to all visitors until the end of the 2025 season”, which runs until October 15, announced the Arizona natural park, in a press release.
The southern shore (South Rim) of the Grand Canyon, preferred by the vast majority of 4.5 million visitors, it still remains accessible.
The park, where a huge column of smoke always overlooks the huge glowing throat dug by the Colorado river, evacuated more than 500 tourists and personal last Thursday, because of two fires burned in and near the north shore.
The fires were triggered by lightning, and one of them, who was burning since July 4, suddenly exploded during the weekend because of strong winds in the region.
He did not make any victim, but destroyed according to the authorities “between 50 and 80 structures” on the north shore, including the only hotel in the area, a building from the 1930s with a breathtaking view of the canyon.
“The inhabitants of Arizona deserve answers on the reasons why this fire was able to ravage the Grand Canyon National Park,” said the state governor Katie Hobbs.
The Democrat called for “to conduct an in -depth and independent investigation into fire management” and was surprised by the choices of the federal authorities.
The firefighters initially did not try to extinguish the fire, but treated it as “a controlled fire” (a fire which is allowed to burn to clean up the vegetation of an area) “during the driest and hottest period of summer in Arizona”, she stressed.
Fire management becomes an even more burning subject this year than usual in the American West, because Donald Trump has implemented important budget cuts and layoffs at the Forest Agency, the American Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation Agency (NOAA) and FEMA, the Federal Disastrous Management Agency.
More than a hundred fires are currently burning throughout the West American, of which around fifty are considered to be out of control, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
In Utah, one of them impressed the authorities this weekend by generating a gigantic tornado of fire.
