Commander in charge of Dragon Bravo Fire defends handling of fire, says it's far from over

The commander in charge of managing the response to the Dragon Bravo Fire raging on in northern Arizona told state lawmakers Tuesday that the fight to contain it is far from over.

Incident Cmdr. John Truett warned that the fire, which has already burned tens of thousands of acres, is expected to keep growing.

Truett says that due to the area’s heavy vegetation, firefighters aren’t able to safely reach the fire’s edge to contain it.

“It's not looking good. I hate to be that guy up here saying it's not looking good, but it's reality. We're not out of the fire season at all,” Truett said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the fire had burned 71,000 acres and was 9% contained, according to InciWeb.

So far, Arizona has had 913 fires in 2025, Truett said. They were mainly accidentally caused by humans. “We basically, in my opinion, we've dodged the bullet this year, haven't had any real large, large fires other than Greer and the few other fires that are going on now. But the potential out there was — was extreme,” Truett said.

Lawmakers questioned the handling of the lightning-caused fire and why it wasn’t more aggressively suppressed at the onset.

Over the past two weeks, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and some of Arizona’s federal legislators also asked the federal government for an explanation about the management of the Dragon Bravo Fire, which is on federal land.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum committed to do the investigation, Hobbs said last week.

Truett says the management decision by the federal government made sense at the time, and that no one anticipated the heavy, sustained winds that have rapidly expanded the fire’s scope.

“This is not a control burn. … There's a full suppression fire,” Truett said, explaining the need for controlled burns which hadn’t happened in the Dragon Bravo Fire area. He said the only person to blame here is “Smokey the Bear.”

“The decision out there that was made was right at the time, but again, when you get hit by a 40 mile an hour north wind that's sustained for 30 hours, you cannot see that coming,” Truett said.

Going forward, Truett says what’s really needed to suppress the Dragon Bravo Fire is a change in the weather and ideally a monsoon storm.

This story was produced by KJZZ, the public radio station in Phoenix, Arizona.