Nearly 4,000 acres were aflame Monday as the Central Fire burned outside of Phoenix, Arizona, adding to hundreds of thousands of acres already on fire in the nearby national forests.
The Central Fire was zero percent contained as firefighters sought to protect structures by keeping the flames from spreading south. The wildfire seems to be moving north, toward the New River Mesa, according to InciWeb, the U.S. Forest Service’s wildfire information site.
Fueled by dry brush and tall grass, the blaze began on Saturday on state land but has since moved into the Tonto National Forest region as it continues to grow.
The Central Fire erupted a week after the Bush Fire first took root in the national forest, about 22 miles northeast of Mesa. The Bush Fire was about 42 percent contained on Monday, with a reported 184,086 burned.
The National Weather Service said Sunday that the Bush Fire was the fifth-largest in the state’s history, but the blaze has continued to grow since then.
Both fires appear to be caused by humans, according to InciWeb. Temperatures as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit have not been helpful in containing the fires.
An additional 51,628 acres are burning in the Coronado National Forest in the Bighorn Fire, which began on June 5 after a lightning strike in the Catalina Mountains northwest of Tucson. Only 16 percent of the Bush Fire had been contained Monday, more than three weeks later.
So far in 2020, Arizona has seen three times as many acres burned as in all of 2019, Department of Forestry and Fire Management said Monday.
While so much of the state’s desert and forestland burn, Arizona is also wrangling a new uptick in coronavirus cases. The surge in has limited the available beds in intensive care units around the state.
