Leaving Wildfires Alone

The blue haze seen on Santa Fe's horizon over the weekend was the result of a 3,500-acre fire burning west of Socorro just outside the community of Magdalena in the Cibola National Forest and Grasslands.

Even though a wildfire is burning much closer to the City Different, forest officials say we're not seeing much from the Commissary Fire, sparked by lightning in the eastern Santa Fe National Forest on June 5. That blaze is being handled as a benefit to the forest, not a detriment, Julie Anne Overton, a spokeswoman for the forest, tells SFR.

She says more than 60 firefighters and assorted personnel are allowing the 220-acre ground fire to burn so that it can clear out all the dead and downed brush, the sizable shrubs and the overgrown grass. That way, future fires in the region might not be as intense.

"This is a good opportunity to get rid of all that dry fuel that's accumulated over the years," she says. "That way we can prevent the pines from torching. The last thing you want in a wildfire is for it to start climbing the trees, then jumping from tree top to tree top."

That's called "crowning," and so far there has been none of that.

Nor have any structures been threatened or damaged from the wildfire, which is 13 miles outside of Pecos, near Commissary Creek and Barrilla Peak. It's burning amid a patch of mixed conifer and ponderosa pine, and isn't too far from the Cat and Dog Fire that broke out in the 1970s.

Ponderosa pine seedlings were planted in its aftermath, and now they've grow to considerable size, but the current fire has not yet burned them down or adversely affected them, according to Overton.Meanwhile, in the Cibola National Forest, roughly 85 firefighters, including Hot Shots, are battling a 3,425-acre blaze from the ground and air in the San Mateo Mountains two miles southeast of Grassy Outlook. And the recent heat wave over the weekend didn’t help matters. Humidity, a key factor in fighting fires, became scarce over the weekend and combined with rising temperatures into the 90s, all of which conspired to enlarge the fire in coincidence with the beginning of summer.Smoke continues to be visible from I-25 south of Socorro, and a dispatcher for the Magdalena District, when contacted by telephone, says it’s certainly possible that the prevailing winds out of the southwest pushed the smoke to the northeast near Santa Fe.This year’s fire season in New Mexico largely has been forecast as a no-show, the result of one of the wettest Mays in the history of the state. And so far, as predicted, the larger fires are occurring in the grasslands, as is the case in the Cibola.The northwest part of the state is also expected to be vulnerable to fires, but so far that hasn't occurred, fire officials say.

Stay up to date on local wildfires here. 

Santa Fe Reporter