Active wildfire in US grows to over 110,000 acres

Washington, June 19 (IANS) A bushfire currently burning in the US state of Arizona has grown to 114,941 acres with just 5 per cent containment, authorities said.

Now the largest active fire in the US, the fire almost doubled in size since Wednesday morning and more evacuation orders had been issued in the state, Xinhua news agency quoted InciWeb, an interstate incident information system, as saying in its latest update on Thursday.

Hot, dry and windy conditions pushed the fire to spread, InciWeb said, adding “an abundance of invasive grasses in the desert ecosystem, native grasses and low fuel moisture in the live plants continue to produce extreme fire behaviour”.

Besides the this bushfire, multiple other blazes continued to burn throughout the Grand Canyon state.

As of Thursday morning, the Mangum Fire near Grand Canyon North Rim burned nearly 56,780 acres with 3 per cent containment, and the Bighorn Fire in south part of the state, spread to 31,208 acres on Thursday morning and is 40 per cent contained.

More than 1,000 firefighters are battling the blazes, the InciWeb said.

So far no casualties have been reported.

–IANS

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