Prescribed burns can be self-defeating
Mother Nature still has the last say, even when rigorous precautions are taken when intentionally setting fire
Paul Mondragon, battalion chief of the Questa Ranger District of Carson National Forest, was up at 5 a.m. March 26, surveying conditions at the Valle Vidal, a mountain basin northeast of Red River.
The district had plans to set the 6,000acre parcel on fire. But as Mondragon was headed back from the prospective burn zone, he got an email: High winds. Red-flag warning, it said. That day, they called it off. The Loop Road prescribed fire, which Mondragon described as the biggest planned burn in Carson or Santa Fe National Forest this season, did go on as planned a few weeks later when there was another window of opportunity.
Before the U.S. Forest Service can light a prescribed burn, officials monitor dozens of conditions, evaluate potential burn risks and assemble crews prepared to respond if things get out of hand.
When prescribed burns go as planned, Mondragon said, they are an effective tool for cleaning up hazardous fuel on
a forest floor and enhancing the forest and wildlife habitat.
When something goes wrong, however, these burns can be catastrophic. The notorious Cerro Grande Fire of 2000, for example, which burned hundreds of homes in Los Alamos, started as a controlled burn.
And the Diener Canyon Fire, which has burned more than 9,000 acres between Grants and Gallup since April 12, started after an ember from a nearly extinguished prescribed burn caught some wind and lit an adjacent area on fire, a Forest Service spokesperson told The New Mexican on Thursday.
When the Forest Service decides a prescribed burn is the right tool to manage an area, it follows national standards for a burn plan which lays out everything from the objectives of a fire to a “Go/No Go” checklist for each day a burn is active to specifying which staff should be on scene.
“There’s quite a bit involved before we can put a match on the ground,” said Mondragon, who was the “burn boss” on the Loop Road fire.
Among the factors that fire officials consider are things like temperature, relative humidity, the speed and direction of the wind and the moisture content of plant fuel in the area.
To measure the moisture of plant fuel — like wood, for example — Forest Service districts use scales, ovens and Excel formulas. Too wet and it won’t burn. Too dry and the fire risk isn’t worth it.
Wind, which may sound like a bad thing when paired with fire, can be helpful in small amounts, Mondragon said. Officials typically want a bit of wind always pushing against a fire, he said, never propelling it forward.
The keys to a proper burn? Careful planning, strict standards and common sense.
“This isn’t real subjective, but you do a gut check as you’re doing this,” he said. “If it’s not feeling right, you back off or you stop altogether.”
In addition to planning to make sure the fire doesn’t get out of control, Mondragon said, burn bosses have to have a plan in case the fire does go outside the prescribed boundaries.
On the Loop Road burn, Mondragon had almost three times the number of staff on site as the burn plan required. He wanted backup resources there because the area is so remote.
“That was one of the high points of this burn, was the cooperation and the partnerships,” Mondragon said, rattling off a handful of fire agencies on scene. “As a burn boss, it made such a difference to have that many folks out there not only to implement the burn but if anything were to go wrong, you had that suppression capacity.”
Peter D’Aquanni, a public affairs officer called in to help with U.S. Forest Service communications on the Diener Canyon Fire, said the escalation of the Redondo prescribed burn was “one of those freaky things.”
The Redondo burn had been over for more than two days and crews were “mopping up,” or making sure the fire was completely out, when authorities think a stray ember caught some wind and sparked the fire.
“They believed they had all the ducks lined up. The wind event that came was not predicted that far out,” D’Aquanni said. “I guess second-guessers could say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t have burned.’ But what they don’t realize is that 99 percent of prescribed burns have a positive result.”
Some in the Santa Fe community push back against the practice of using prescribed burns. Sam Hitt, president of the Santa Fe Forest Coalition, said he believes prescribed burns are ignited too often. There is an important difference between controlled burns and naturally occurring wildfires, he said: Controlled burns cause more smoke when they smolder and can hurt human health.
Hitt said he also thinks they are more harmful to biodiversity.
“In some cases, you could make a case where prescribed fires are needed,” he said, “… but I think those cases are rare.”
After the Loop Road burn, Mondragon surveyed the burn area by air. While wind does make spring burns tricky, he said, the burns allow firefighters to get a feel for what summer might bring.
What he saw in Valle Vidal was that big logs, which typically take a while to smolder and burn, had been reduced quickly to “piles of white ash.”
That was good news for the purpose of getting rid of excess fuel — and a forecast for the season ahead.
“We’re dry out there,” Mondragon said. “It’s a big heads up for us. It’s a big indicator of what a wildfire would potentially look like, should we get one under conditions we’re experiencing right now.”
Contact Sami Edge at 505-9863055 or sedge@sfnewmexican.com.
“Ninetynine percent of prescribed burns have a positive result.” Peter D’Aquanni, public affairs officer