4 days ago
‘No saving it': Fire destroys Oxbow Bridge, cutting off Arizona to California route
The Oxbow Bridge has been destroyed by fire, cutting off a key route that connects the rural Arizona community of Cibola in La Paz County to California.
The bridge in western Arizona also served as a shortcut to Yuma before it collapsed into the Colorado River on Aug. 1.
The route was now 'impassable," the Bureau of Land Management said in a social media post.
The wooden structure had connected Levee Road to the west side of the Colorado River. It was destroyed by what officials called the 'Oxbow 2 Fire,' which burned about five acres near the Oxbow Recreation and Wildlife Area, according to the agency.
Photos of the structure showed it engulfed in flames.
It took less than two hours for the bridge to completely collapse, said Brad Robinson, a farmer in nearby Blythe, California, who witnessed the fire and called 911.
'You knew it was done. There was no saving it,' said Robinson, 48.
The fire began in the brush nearby, Robinson said. Within 15 to 20 minutes, the flames spread to brush underneath the wooden bridge and set it ablaze, he added.
'Next thing you know, the whole entire bridge was burning,' Robinson said. 'You could just sit there and watch it keep jumping from span to span. It just kept running down the bridge until the point of where the whole bridge, every part of it that was wood, was completely engulfed.'
The fire was under investigation, the Bureau of Land Management said. In the meantime, the Bureau of Reclamation used buoys to mark the submerged hazard in the water.
'Boaters are urged to avoid the area and exercise extreme caution due to floating debris and unmarked hazards downstream,' the agency said.
Local nonprofit Friends of Cibola NWR also advised boaters to avoid the area in a Facebook post.
Other agencies that responded to the fire included the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Imperial County Fire Department and local law enforcement.
The Oxbow Bridge has burned down in the past, Robinson said. He offered a piece of advice for keeping wooden bridges intact.
'If they're going to have a wooden bridge, don't let the brush build up underneath it. If there had been no brush around that bridge, that bridge would have never burned,' Robinson said.
Stephanie Murray covers national politics and the Trump administration for The Arizona Republic and Reach her via email at and on X, Bluesky, TikTok and Threads @stephanie_murr.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Route from Arizona to California now impassable after bridge fire
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