KVNF's Senior Reporter Lisa Young spoke with Nikki Carpenter, Public Information Officer, on the South Rim Fire at the Black Canyon National Park. The conversation took place on July 30, 2025.
Carpenter said operations on the fire are beginning to wrap up with crews still working on containment lines and mopping up hotspots near the East Portal road.
"From this point forward its all kind of rehabilitation and ecological restoration," she said.
The fire which began on July 10th via a dry lightening strike has burned over 4,000 acres along the main tourist area at the South Rim of the park east of Montrose. Carpenter says the fire is now listed at just over fifty-percent containment.
Structures lost and saved
Unfortunately a number of structures were lost in the fire including a maintenance building, a welding shop and some storage facilities. Also lost in the blaze were two vault toilets, infrastructure in one of two of the campground loops and the amphitheater screen. One the bright side, fire crews were able to save the visitor's center from flames, however, there is likely smoke damage to the structure.
"There were no private homes or buildings lost during the South Rim Fire," said Carpenter, who also noted that critical infrastructure along the East Portal Road were not damaged.
The North Rim was also on fire
One the same day, another much smaller fire started on the North Rim of the canyon, that fire reached about five acres before it was successfully put down. The North Rim area is now open to visitors while the South Rim remains closed for restoration work to begin.
"The South Rim will remain closed. They have not been able to estimate a time of reopening. They're still undergoing damage assessments and making a plan for repairing damaged infrastructure and what the timeline might look like. They may open it in stages so they can do the work they need to make it safe for our visit for their visitors," said Carpenter.
Evacuations lifted, families head home
All of the evacuation notices for residents in the South Rim fire area have been canceled and families are allowed to return home. In addition, the incident command station was moved from Johnson Elementary School to the Montrose County Fairgrounds event center.
"The Montrose County Sheriff's Office had green ready status in several zones south of the fire, near the Bostwick community and also on the North Rim, and that was just in case conditions changed. We had a series of red flag days over the weekend, and they wanted to make sure the incident was stable before they lifted them. And they did announce today, July 30th that those evacuation statuses are lifted so, there are no longer any evacuation statuses due to the South Rim Fire," she said.
When will the fire be completely out
As for when, the fire will be completely out, Carpenter said that may be awhile.
"To answer your question about how the public can know when this is complete, it it may be a while. And in fact, we may still have heat on those cliffs and outcroppings that may kick up from time to time when the wind picks up and we may see smoke until a season ending event takes place. Like our monsoonal moisture that we usually get several days of heavy rain or a big snow storm in the fall."
How was the South Rim Fire managed...'controlled burn' or 'full suppression' strategy
While some questioned if the fire was being managed as 'controlled burn', Carpenter was quick to dispel that assertion. Carpenter said the fire was always managed with full suppression as the goal.
"I can tell you that the South Rim Fire has always been managed as a full suppression fire. Suppression was always the primary goal from the day it started. I believe the timeline when they located the fire began at 11:50 a.m. They realized that it was growing too quickly for them to catch it, and evacuated the park at 1:00 p.m. and then by 8:00 p.m. the fire was sixteen hundred and forty acres. And when a fire is growing that fast and is that intense, there's really nothing you can do. You can't put firefighters in there up against it. There were a lot of resources here working hard to put out that fire and they just couldn't catch it. It was going too fast."
Smoke and fire will remain for sometime
Carpenter told KVNF that the possibility of the fire rekindling in areas on the canyon rim is a reality until a season ending event occurs. However, she said the probability of the fire spreading outside the existing fire perimeter is extremely low due to the geography of the canyon.
