Butte Fire (Arizona)
True color
Fire (SWIR)
Infrared / SWIR (right): sees through smoke.
🟢 green = vegetation
🟤 red/brown = burned
🟠 orange = active fire
Imagery: Sentinel-2 (Copernicus). Drag to compare smoke vs. infrared.
Heat detections: NASA FIRMS (last 48h).
Quick facts
- Location
- 20 Miles SW from San Carlos, AZ
- Cause
- Natural
- Complexity
- Type 5 Incident
- Fuel
- Tall Grass (2.5 feet)
- Behavior
- Minimal, Smoldering, Backing
- Jurisdiction
- BIA · Federal land
Burning for eight days with an average daily growth of approximately 84 acres per day, the Butte Fire has charred 670 acres of federal land in Gila County, Arizona, located 20 miles southwest of San Carlos. Fire behavior on the Type 5 incident is currently minimal, characterized by smoldering and backing through 2.5-foot tall grass.
Suppression efforts by the Bureau of Indian Affairs have successfully brought the natural-cause wildfire to 100 percent containment under a Type 5 Incident Command. Operations have incurred a cost of $40,000.
This activity occurs within the region's typical fire season, which runs from June to October. Nationally, 2,799,726 hectares have burned so far in 2026, marking a figure 49 percent below the two-decade average.
In context
This wildfire burned in Arizona for 10 days. In total it burned about 670 acres — around 2.7 km².
In the Northern Hemisphere, wildfire activity usually peaks during the warm, dry months — roughly May through October.
The bigger picture in United States
Across United States, roughly 3,178,795 hectares have burned so far in 2026 — 42% below the two-decade average. Data from Copernicus GWIS.
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