Tinder Fire
2018 Arizona wildfire
The Tinder Fire was a wildfire that burned 16,309 acres (6,600 ha) of the Coconino National Forest in the U.S. state of Arizona during April and May 2018. The fire was detected by a United States Forest Service (USFS) lookout tower on April 27, 2018, and firefighters began working to contain its spread within the day. Benefiting from strong winds, low humidity, and high temperatures, the fire grew rapidly over late April, prompting the closure of Arizona State Route 87 and evacuation orders for 1,000 houses in Coconino County. These orders remained until May 4. Almost 700 firefighters were involved in combating the fire, which was fully contained on May 24. The investigation into the fire determined that the Tinder Fire was caused by a prohibited campfire.
Background
Wildfires are a natural part of the ecological cycle of the Southwestern United States. The Tinder Fire was one of 2,000 wildfires that burned 165,356 acres (66,917 ha) in Arizona in 2018. In January 2018, Doug Ducey, the governor of Arizona, warned that the state—then in a historically dry winter season, plagued by drought, and recovering from the 2017 wildfire season—could face a "disastrous" wildfire season in 2018. At the time the Tinder Fire began, weather conditions in the Mogollon Rim region of Arizona were abnormally dry, hot, and windy; four red flag warnings had been issued by the National Weather Service for the area since April 1.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55391381. Authority coordinates are 34.558, -111.161. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tinder Fire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.