YPG crews help fight Mittry Fire near Yuma, smoke advisory issued

Yuma Proving Ground firefighters joined Rural Metro and the Bureau of Land Management in the overnight response to the Mittry Fire, a brush fire that started near Grey Water Pond at Mittry Lake and sent a smoke advisory toward the Howard Cantonment Area.

Rural Metro said crews were first called to the area at about 10:20 p.m. Saturday, May 23, 2026, and found a brush fire about 100 feet by 50 feet that was spreading. Firefighters stretched hose lines and asked for help from both BLM and the Yuma Proving Ground Fire Department as the blaze moved through dry brush near one of the county’s busiest recreation areas.

YPG’s fire department arrived to assist and was later cleared by command, while Rural Metro crews stayed on scene until BLM released them around 4:30 a.m. BLM said it expected the fire to be contained by the end of the day, but a wildfire tracker using National Interagency Fire Center data still listed the Mittry Fire at 184 acres and 0% contained as of May 24, 2026. The tracker identified the reported cause as human.

KYMA reported that Rural Metro said teenagers firing fireworks caused the fire. That detail has not been independently confirmed in the information available here, but it underscores how quickly a small ignition can turn into an overnight response when wind, heat and dry brush line up in Yuma County.

For residents near YPG and the Howard Cantonment Area, the immediate concern was not flames reaching the installation but smoke and ash drifting across nearby neighborhoods and roads. Officials said the fire did not pose a direct threat to YPG, yet the response showed how quickly military and civilian agencies can be pulled into the same incident when a fire starts close to the border of public land and the proving ground.

Mittry Lake Wildlife Area, managed by BLM, is a popular fishing destination north of Yuma, and the fire burned in a place where recreation, wildlife habitat and public access overlap. That makes fast coordination especially important: BLM oversees the land, Rural Metro led the initial attack, and YPG provided mutual-aid support from the installation’s Fire Protection & Prevention Division, which the Army says provides fire and emergency services to the community.

The incident also landed against a wider backdrop of land-management and military-readiness issues around Yuma Proving Ground. BLM announced a five-year withdrawal of 21,782.981 acres adjacent to the installation in March 2024, and Rep. Paul Gosar introduced H.R. 8686 on May 8, 2026, to authorize withdrawal and reservation of roughly 22,000 acres in Yuma and La Paz counties, including about 249 acres in the Howard Cantonment Area that the Army says it has used continuously since 1955.