Massive NM fire tied to prescribed burns
SANTA FE, N.M. » Two fires that merged to create the largest wildfire in New Mexico history have both been traced to prescribed burns set by U.S. forest managers as preventative measures, federal investigators announced Friday.
The findings shift responsibility more squarely toward the U.S. Forest Service for initiating a natural disaster that has destroyed at least 330 homes as flames raged through nearly 500 square miles of high-altitude pine forests and meadows. The wildfire also has displaced thousands of residents from rural villages with Spanish-colonial roots and high poverty rates, while unleashing untold environmental damage.
Roughly 3,000 firefighters, along with waterdropping planes and helicopters, continue to fight the blaze as it approaches mountain resorts and Native American communities. Firefighting costs already surpass $132 million, climbing by $5 million a day.
Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández described a rising sense of outrage as the fire triggers new evacuations of families and livestock. Fear of flames is giving way to concern about erosion and mudslides in places were superheated fire penetrates soil and roots.
“The destruction these two fires caused is immeasurable and will be felt for generations,” said Leger Fernández, sponsor of a bill that would reimburse residents and businesses routed by the fire.
The Forest Service has not yet released detailed planning documents for the original prescribed burns that might indicate whether fire protocols were followed.
Scientist and forest managers are racing to develop new tools to forecast the behavior of prescribed fires amid climate change and an enduring drought in the American West. Prescribed fires are aimed at limiting the accumulation of timber and underbrush that, if left unattended, can fuel extremely hot and destructive wildfires.
The Biden administration announced in January a $50 billion plan to stave off catastrophic wildfires that would more than double the use of controlled fires and logging to reduce trees and other vegetation that serve as tinder in the most at-risk areas. Prescribed burns often are used in wildland areas that are too vast to thin by hand or machine.
The two fires east of Santa Fe joined in April to form the massive blaze at the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains, in the Sangre de Cristo range.
One of the fires was previously traced to April 6, when a prescribed burn, set by firefighters to clear out small trees and brush, was declared out of control.
On Friday, investigators said they had tracked the source of the second fire to the remnants of a prescribed winter fire that lay dormant through several snowstorms only to flare up again last month.
Investigators said the prescribed “pile burn” was initiated in January at Gallinas Canyon in the Santa Fe National Forest outside Las Vegas, N.M., and concluded in the final days of that month.
Fire was reported again in the same vicinity April 9 and escaped control 10 days later amid dry, hot and windy conditions, Forest Service investigators found.