Gurule Fire a chance to ‘do some good’ for the forest
Topping out at 2,360 acres, the managed burn showcases importance of fire in the landscape
Some things only happen because everything lines up at the right moment. So it was with the Gurule Fire.
The fire started with a lightning strike June 7 in a part of the forest about 10 miles from the village of El Rito in Río Arriba County.
As top fire management officials with the U.S. Forest Service in Northern New Mexico considered their options — put it out or help it burn, almost like they would a prescribed fire — the conditions seemed ideal to do the latter.
The air was cool, and the ground was still largely wet with snow and snowmelt.
“If we can get in there and safely do it, then we want to get in and do it,” said Jamie Long, incident commander on the Gurule Fire and a battalion chief based out of the Tres Piedras Forest Service office.
There was a lot to consider. The fire was burning in the watershed for El Rito, and the stream system in the area is home to a “core population” of cutthroat trout, Long said.
“If we would’ve had that same fire at that same place at this time last year, I fear that canyon and drainage would’ve suffered quite a severe event,” said Long. “Last year would not have been the time to do it.”
But this fire season is a far cry from the last, when the Ute Park Fire in Colfax County exploded in less than a day, and Colorado saw the biggest fire complex in the state’s history destroy forests and communities just north of the state line.
“We were really fortunate that we had the winter we had,” Long said. Indeed, the snow-water equivalent, a measure of the precipitation in a particular area, reached 129 percent of the 30-year normal in the Río Chama watershed.
Firefighters were stationed on the Gurule Fire starting June 8, and most firefighters were demobilized, or sent off to other assignments in the state and region, on Tuesday (June 25). Two engines are staying behind to monitor the fire and make sure it stays within its boundaries.
The fire started off as a single tree torching; it was engulfed in fire, but wasn’t spreading to the surrounding area. Three days in, it was still only one or two acres. A week after it started, it was only five acres. It’s final area was 2,360 acres.
Plans to scale up the fire were put on hold at one point. By June 15, more than 130 people and several engines had been staged to manage the fire — building fire lines that would contain it within an established perimeter, and conducting burn-out operations, where firefighters coax the fire to move across the landscape in a manageable way.
But rained moved in and almost derailed the plan.
“We were evaluating if we were going to shut the whole thing down,” said Long. “We put in good lines and were proud of what we did at that point.” They could have simply come back during another wet year and used those fire lines, which consisted of old logging roads, for a prescribed burn.
“But it dried out pretty quick,” said Long. A reduced force of about 30 to 50 people handled the fire from then until earlier this week.
Another small fire, dubbed the Potrero Fire, started in roughly the same area as the Gurule Fire. But it was moving quickly and staff for the first fire were already being sent away, so fire management officers decided, “This was not the time,” Long said, and quickly suppressed it.
“I think it went really well,” said Long, thinking about the arc of the Gurule Fire. It was a chance to bring fire back in a landscape that evolved to need periodic burns, as frequently as every two to 12 years in some areas, and clean the forest of weak, diseased trees that couldn’t survive the moderate flames.
When it comes to doing the work of ensuring forests are healthy and get the occasional fire they need, “We don’t want to kick the can down the road,” Long said. “Any year we can do this, we need to take advantage of that.”