Copyright © 2015 Albuquerque Journal
JEMEZ SPRINGS – Todd Decker walks across forest ground thinned by fire and chain-saw, pointing out large, black smudges where piles of brush, branches and felled trees have been cremated to eliminate fuel that might have fed a hungry wildfire someday down the line.
Todd Decker, fire management officer for the Jemez Ranger District of the Santa Fe National Forest, on April 7 talks about strategies for reducing the danger of fire in the Thompson Ridge area, which burned in 2013. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)
“We’ll burn about four or five piles per acre,” says Decker, fire management officer for the Jemez Springs Ranger District of the Santa Fe National Forest. “We are focusing mainly on the communities for the clearing efforts. There’s a residential area about a half mile up the road.”
This was early last week just north of Jemez Springs, the site of the Thompson Ridge Fire, a relatively tame, low-intensity blaze that burned 24,000 acres between May 31 and July 10, 2013.
Predictions for a wetter-than-normal spring, less wind than usual and maybe even a more active summer monsoon season have some fire managers hoping for a fairly calm fire season in New Mexico this year.
New Mexico’s largest forest fires
The four largest New Mexico forest fires over the past 25 years have all occurred within the past four years.
• Whitewater-Baldy Fire, Gila National Forest, May 16, 2012, to July 19, 2012 – 297,845 acres.
• Las Conchas Fire, Santa Fe National Forest, June 26, 2011, to Aug. 1, 2011 – 156,593 acres.
• Silver Fire, Gila National Forest, June 7, 2013, to July 19, 2013 – 138,546 acres.
• Donaldson Fire, Hondo, June 28, 2011, to July 9, 2011 – 101,563 acres.
Source: Southwest Coordinating Center, An Interagency Group That Tracks Fires In Four Southwestern States
The cost of fire
Fire cost $48 million to fight and an additional $150 million due to flooding through fire-stripped watersheds that destroyed structures and property, and polluted water supplies with ash.The four largest New Mexico forest fires over the past 25 years have all occurred within the past four years.
Source: Janie Chermak, University of New Mexico economics professor
But when it comes to fire, things are seldom as straightforward as that. Last year’s monsoons and some moisture late this winter resulted in more grasses – what fire managers refer to as fine fuel – than have been seen in New Mexico since 2009. That has some fire planners expecting fewer mountain forest fires but more lowland grass fires.
Decker passes tangles of Gambel oak, the leaves dry and pale orange this time of year. He notes clumps of grasses, pale green or straw yellow – and springy.
“Snowpack will flatten down grasses like this,” Decker said. “We had 17 inches in some places up here in March, but it just left quick.”
Conditions in this state can change in a blink. That’s why Decker, like anyone involved in fire management, hopes for the best and prepares for the worst.
About 10 miles north of the Thompson Ridge Fire area, you will find the worst – the site of the fierce Las Conchas Fire that consumed more than 156,000 acres between June 26 and Aug. 1, 2011.
Las Conchas was Hades unleashed, destroying in half a day what it took Thompson Ridge a month to chew through.
The one thing certain about fire season in New Mexico is that – not so bad, bad enough or bad as it gets – there always is one.
Off and burning
Fire season fluctuates year to year, but can often run from early spring until late fall.
Already this year, more than 150 fires have burned about 10,000 acres of state-owned and private land. And three weeks ago, a fire in the Gila National Forest burned 25 acres six miles north of Mimbres.
“I have been in this business long enough to know you can’t predict anything,” said Bea Day, fire management officer for the Cibola National Forest and a U.S. Forest Service employee since 1985.
Pile burns have gone a long way in thinning out the forest in this section just north of Jemez Springs. This area was the site of the Thompson Ridge Fire that burned about 24,000 acres in the spring and summer of 2013. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)
The Cibola encompasses the Sandia, Manzanita and Manzano mountains.
“We may get some moisture in here and that might delay at least the severe fire season,” Day said. “We had more moisture from snowpack in the Sandias this year than we’ve had the last two years, but I think that is mostly gone and will be gone by the end of May or early June.
“In the Cibola, we have more lightning-started fires than human-started fires, so our concern is the monsoon season.”
Steven Miranda, fire planner for the Santa Fe and Kit Carson national forests in northern New Mexico, is hoping for a less-active fire season for several reasons.
“We’ve had a better winter, better snowpack than we have had in five years and now are getting some spring rains and less wind than we are used to,” Miranda said.
Miranda said if the predicted precipitation actually occurs, it might give the Forest Service the opportunity to manage fires in different ways by letting them burn.
“We’ll allow fire to play a more natural role, allow it to reduce fuels and improve wildlife habitat and provide more resilient watersheds,” he said.
Miranda believes this season’s predominant fires will be desert-type fires around the Lincoln National Forest and the Guadalupe Mountains in southeastern New Mexico.
“They have a lot of grasses, dry air and dry weather that could put them into more of a fire risk,” he said.
Brent Wachter, fire weather meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Albuquerque office, said he also believes the fire season will offer a contrast between the mountains, where danger will not be as high due to more moisture, and the lowlands, where the risk will be greater because of an abundance of fine fuel.
“We have a lot of grass, which is why we are seeing a lot of fires now,” he said. “With all that cover of grass, anyone does something stupid, we’ll get fires. There will be fires in the lowlands where people live.”
Wachter, like Miranda, feels there will be a chance this season for managing lightning-caused mountain fires so that they will burn to the benefit of the environment.
“We will be seeing smoke coming from the mountains, but that will be a good thing,” he said. “I don’t see too many days when we see monster plumes. I am not expecting monster Las Conchas fires.”
What’s normal, anyway?
Punky Moore is public affairs officer for the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico, the most
A motorgrader joins in the battle against a 12,000-acre grass fire near Cimarron in 2006. Anticipated moisture may mean fewer New Mexico forest fires this season, but an especially abundant grass cover this year could lead to more lowland grass fires. (Eddie Moore/Journal)
moisture-deprived section of the state in recent months. The Gila is also the site of three of the five largest forest fires in state history.
In charting fire-control strategies, Moore said Gila fire managers depend on predictive services, a division of the Southwest Coordination Center, an interagency organization that tracks fire conditions and coordinates fire-fighting resources in four Southwestern states.
“On a daily basis, we are checking the conditions and seeing if we need to change strategies,” she said. “We are looking at a normal fire season right now, but what does that really mean? If you get one of those wind events, it makes a fire very active very quick.”
She said some prediction models are pointing to conditions that will be warmer and drier later in the summer, so there might be more risk of fire in August and September.
And even the promise of rain earlier in the summer is not all that reassuring, Moore said.
“We have 3.3 million acres of forest,” she said. “We may get a little moisture in one area of the forest and the other half may get none. At this time of year when visitations increase on the forest, we need everyone’s cooperation to reduce risks.”
Never count on rain
New Mexico State Forestry has been busy early in the season, fighting numerous fires that have already scorched 10,000 acres of state-owned and private lands. A majority of those fires have been grass fires, which is not unusual for this time of year.
Grass fires are the biggest challenge facing Hector Madrid, fire management officer for the Bureau of Land Management. His firefighters are responsible for 13.8 million acres in four BLM districts in New Mexico: one that includes Carlsbad and Roswell, one that takes in the state’s boothill and up into Sierra County, one that stretches from Albuquerque to the Arizona border and one that includes BLM lands around Farmington and land adjacent to Taos.
Madrid said the BLM will be prepared for whatever happens with 111 firefighters and 14 fire engines in the state and access to seven Department of Interior single engine air tanker planes, two of which will be located in Roswell.
“We don’t just say, ‘Oh well, it’s going to rain.’ ”