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Shaun McKinnon | Environment Editor and Storytelling Coach
@shaunmckinnon |
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| 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. |
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| 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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President Trump’s promise to stem the flow of migrants across the border seems fulfilled: Fewer migrants are crossing and filling shelters. |
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Two Arizona high school students were shot while camping off State Route 87. Cases like this are rare, but they do have things in common. |
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With rising temperatures, how can wine grow in Arizona? Wine makers and experts join Valley 101 to talk about adapting to climate change. |
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She wanted to refresh her grandmother’s historic Phoenix cafe. She didn’t know the show was “Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service.” Here’s how it went. |
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One time, Bill Goodykoontz interviewed this old guy, and he went on and on about how important good journalism is to democracy. He was right. |
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