The acreage torched by wildfires in Arizona was up sharply this year, but fire officials said it was still not a particularly bad season in terms of lives lost and structures burned in the blazes.
The 2020 wildfire season had burned just under 955,000 acres as of Wednesday, according to the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management, That’s almost double the 520,000 acres that burned in 3,627 fires over the previous two years combined.
The state recorded 2,357 fires statewide this year, of which 1,919 were caused by human activity. In fact, the biggest wildfire in Arizona this year, the Bush Fire, was started by a vehicle fire in the Tonto National Forest northeast of Phoenix on June 13. It destroyed a total of 193,455 acres.
The Bighorn Fire north of Tucson was the second largest fire this year, burning 119, 987 acres.