🔥 Could Arizona face a megafire? The signs are…

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Fri Jun 13 2025

Shaun McKinnon | Environment Editor and Storytelling Coach

@shaunmckinnon

Hey readers,

It’s Shaun Mckinnon , The Republic’s environment editor and storytelling coach.

I was up in the high country recently and, on the edge of the Mogollon Rim above Payson, the ground was still charred from the West Fire, which burned across about 15,000 acres last September. Lightning sparked the blaze and fire crews managed it for almost a month, allowing it to burn the way fires used to before people started extinguishing them at the first sign of smoke.

Not even half a mile away, timber crews had treated overgrown forest areas that might have fueled a much larger fire had lightning struck there. Their work was part of a wider effort by the U.S. Forest Service, Salt River Project and other agencies to avoid the sort of megafires that char hundreds of thousands of acres.

Stephen Pyne, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University and the author of a shelf full of books on wildfire history and policy, was on the rim that day with a tour group of environmental journalists. He talked about the importance of mechanical thinning and managed fire, preferably together and in that order, he said. Forests need small fires to stave off the disasters. The West Fire showed how it could work.

Wildfires have been the focus of land managers and high country residents as long as most of them have been there, but the concept of megafires moved into the public discussion in 2002, when the Rodeo-Chediski Fire raged through nearly half a million acres in eastern Arizona. It wasn’t long after that state and federal agencies began talking about a comprehensive forest health plan.

Then this past January, wildfire exploded into neighborhoods around Los Angeles, and anyone who lived in an area prone to fire — the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, in land management-speak — was asking the same question: Could it happen here? Or more specifically, after one of the driest winters on record in Arizona, what could happen here?

Our environment and climate team spread out across Arizona and produced a series of stories that try to answer that question. The story you’ll read today, by climate reporter Joan Meiners, goes at the question of not only preparing for wildfires, but preparing to rebuild the right way when fires burn.

Are Arizona cities prepared to evade urban wildfires? If not, will they build back better?

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Arizona cities are trying to avoid destructive wildfires

In the midst of a dry winter, images of the California wildfires struck fear in the hearts of Arizonans. Some cities are more prepared than others.

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🔥 Could Arizona face a megafire? The signs are already here

🔥 Could Arizona face a megafire? The signs are…

Your Week with AZCentral

Shaun McKinnon | Environment Editor and Storytelling Coach

Subscribe to our newsletter

Arizona cities are trying to avoid destructive wildfires

For 1st time in decades, the border is silent. Here’s why

2 Arizona teens were murdered while camping. Sadly, this has happened before

How climate change is reshaping Arizona’s wine industry

A notorious TV chef gutted her grandma’s famous cafe

My mission is to uncover the truth. Your support matters

Sign up for the news you want

Like this:

🔥 Could Arizona face a megafire? The signs are already here

🔥 Could Arizona face a megafire? The signs are…

Your Week with AZCentral

Shaun McKinnon | Environment Editor and Storytelling Coach

Subscribe to our newsletter

Arizona cities are trying to avoid destructive wildfires

For 1st time in decades, the border is silent. Here’s why

2 Arizona teens were murdered while camping. Sadly, this has happened before

How climate change is reshaping Arizona’s wine industry

A notorious TV chef gutted her grandma’s famous cafe

My mission is to uncover the truth. Your support matters

Sign up for the news you want

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