Feds shift to suppression strategy in wake of Grand Canyon's Dragon Bravo Fire

The latest: Federal officials this year will prioritize suppression, "meaning when a fire begins, we'll put it out," U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said during an April subcommittee hearing.

• The Department of the Interior also is consolidating wildfire operations under the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service.

Catch up quick: The Dragon Bravo Fire, ignited by a lightning strike, burned around 145,000 acres last summer.

• The fire also destroyed the century-old Grand Canyon Lodge.
• Dragon Bravo burned for three months and became the seventh-largest wildfire in Arizona history and the largest wildfire in the U.S. last year.

Zoom in: At the time, the National Park Service defended its strategy of allowing the fire to burn to consume fuel.

• But Burgum later acknowledged that federal officials erred and that letting the fire burn likely allowed it to spiral out of control.
• "In retrospect, an approach of suppression versus containment might have saved hundreds of millions of dollars of historic properties," he said in April.

Between the lines: There are about 28 million acres of federal land in Arizona.

• The Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management is responsible for wildfire suppression on about 22 million acres of state and private land.