Partial blue skies in the morning allowed many park visitors to ignore fires on the North Rim. By afternoon, ashfall made for a different story.

The Dragon Bravo Fire is now the eighth-largest wildfire affecting a national park since 2021, growing rapidly and completely uncontained.

Melinda Rich Marshall pointed her white S.U.V. toward a billowing tower of smoke on Tuesday and gunned it down the now-empty roads leading to the charred North Rim of the Grand Ca