A lawyer called me today to find out if I thought she might have a case against the federal government for its role in the origins of the Hermit Peak/Calf Canyon fire burning near Las Vegas, New Mexico. She is a sincere woman, and I could tell she wanted to help the many people who had their homes and other buildings burned in the Calf Canyon Fire. I couldn’t give her a good answer to her technical questions about the fires, but I could help her ask good questions. This fire raises many good questions.
Whenever a prescribed fire touches off a wildfire, people get upset and even litigious for good reason. Prescribed fires are burns that land managers light intentionally to restore the ecological health of a particular area of public land. Very few prescribed fires cause wildfires but the ones that do are never forgotten. Prescribed burning is a science, where managers consider a wide range of environmental factors before they light a match. And those wide range of variables all offer opportunities for disaster.
What happened near Las Vegas, NM?
On April 6, fire managers from the Santa Fe National Forest ignited a prescribed fire near Hermit Peak. Called the Las Dispensas burn, the fire was declared a wildfire after un-forecast winds blew embers out of the containment lines. This area lies on the far eastern edge of the Santa Fe National Forest near Las Vegas, New Mexico, where the southern flanks of the Rocky Mountains diminish into the rolling forested and grasslands of the eastern plains. Many people live in scattered homes and ranches there, some of which have been in the Hispano families for generations.
The Las Dispensas prescribed fire was hit with winds unpredicted by the National Weather Service, just as the Cerro Grande prescribed fire near Los Alamos had been 22 years before. The Las Dispensas prescribed fire became the Hermit Peak Fire as teams of firefighters and an incident command worked to contain it. They succeeded, getting the fire 95% contained before strong winds hit it on April 22 and spread it beyond containment lines. It merged with the Calf Canyon Fire on April 23.
But on April 19 a new fire started five miles away. This Calf Canyon Fire was hit by severe winds on April 22 and grew to 30,000 acres in one day. The source of the Calf Canyon Fire is under investigation. Some people say that an ember from the Hermit Peak Fire started the Calf Canyon Fire but this would require an ember to travel 5 miles. Given fire behavior at the Hermit Peak Fire at that time, this may not be likely. (Without talking to someone who was working on the Hermit Peak Fire, I can only make educated speculations about these events.) Five miles is a very long way for a live ember to travel, unless the Hermit Peak Fire had developed a column which is unlikely given its containment status on April 22.
The Forest Service has concluded that the Calf Canyon Fire was started by an ember left over from a 4 month old pile-burn in Calf Canyon. This is a highly unusual event. Normally pile burning coals go out within a week or two at the most after a burn, especially in the winter. We can only conclude that a large log must have been smoldering near the edge of the burn unit or outside of the burn unit and the winds blew the fire to life.
The Forest Service could have been patrolling that pile burn for smoke in April. They could have and if they had they may have found the smoldering roots or log. But again, it is highly unusual for heat to persist so long after a burn. I suspect more post burn patrols will happen months later after this mishap.
In many people’s minds the two fires are one. The Calf Canyon Fire spread over toward the Hermit Peak Fire and the two merged. Many in the public assume that the prescribed fire started the Calf Canyon Fire. Unlikely, but it hardly matters in a political environment where rural people are suspicious of the federal government and many people like to find someone to blame when possible. If the prescribed fire that started the Hermit Peak fire had not happened, the Calf Canyon Fire would have created the same firestorm we see today.
The Calf Canyon Fire is a climate driven fire event. Note that the extensive rolling hill country surrounding Las Vegas and Mora has many homes that are more than 100 years old. People have been living in scattered homesteads here for generations without big fires causing evacuations. Yet now they are getting burned out by a high severity firestorm. Climate scientists have no doubt that these sorts of fires are climate change driven events, and they will continue as people are doing very little to limit greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming.
While human property loss is a huge tragedy, the fire is also creeping into a large area of wildland to the west, the greater Pecos Wilderness area. The same generally west winds that have been spreading the fire in the lowlands are stronger in the high country and they have slowed fire growth toward the west, into large areas of mixed conifer forest in the Mora and Pecos River country.
Even so, we face the prospect of large areas of forest being killed by the fire, reducing the green mountains to a land of grass and dead trees for generations to come. The Pecos Wilderness will be burned to an unknown extent by this fire. Already the fire is approaching the headwaters of the Mora River.
The Bigger Picture
All of this was preventable. People started the Calf Canyon and Hermit Peak Fires. People have known about greenhouse gas and climate change for decades. Little has been done about it and little will be done about it in a relevant timeframe. These fires are feeding on climate change drought dry forests. These forests could have been treated with frequent natural fire or prescribed fire but it took a century for federal land agencies to change their policies regarding prescribed and natural fire.
Now is too late. This story will play out all summer as the fire season moves north into Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the Pacific Northwest. People will treat these disasters as local events when they are international-scale events.
Humans could make protecting our planet the number one priority for every person alive. But we don’t. The environment is an abstraction for most and we go about our fossil fuel driven lives with little regard for the consequences. (I am guilty as well.) We don’t demand action from our governments and many people deny the reality of climate change and resist government action. And governments, corrupted by oil money turn away, hoping it all just go away magically.
In terms of the Calf Canyon Fire, we can only hope an unusual rainstorm comes and soon. As with all large fires, people can only manage the fire on the margins. Only a weather change will put it out.
