Despite rain, fire danger mounting

By Tom Purdom
Staff Writer

GRANTS — With more moisture falling than Cibola and McKinley counties have seen in years, it is hard to believe that fire season is just around the corner.

Unless Mother Nature dumps rain in the area day-after-day for the next several months, the beginning of fire season has just been prolonged a few weeks, fire experts said.

Tony Pacheco, acting fire management officer for Mount Taylor in the Mount Taylor Ranger District of Cibola National Forest said the fire season is coming. The question is when.

All it takes is prolonged wind and a bit more warm weather. "The last few years the fire season started a bit early because there was little or no moisture and the winds were strong early," Pacheco said.

Mother Nature can dump record amounts of moisture on the wildlands and forests but in the end, "We'll still have fires," Pacheco said. "About mid-April we'll start getting smaller lightning strike fires, but the wind is a major factor in drying things out."

Winds have raced through McKinley and Cibola counties at a clip surpassing 20 miles per hour for the past few days.

The winds dry out what forest workers call fuel loadings, which are nothing more than trees, brush and grasses. Fuels are also dead and down trees, which cause major concern for foresters. Dead-and-down trees burn fast and hot when they catch on fire. The extreme lack of moisture over the past few years killed trees to create dead and down trees. Most of New Mexico and the entire southwest have experienced little or no moisture during the past several years.

Little or no moisture also kills grasses and brush, turning them into dry, crackling tender just waiting to explode into fire.

Too little moisture has another effect. It makes trees weak. The problem is, weak trees create the perfect atmosphere for burrowing beetles to attack trees making the trees too weak to produce sap to push the beetle out of the hole it burrowed. The end result is more dead and down trees on the forest floors and a lot more fuel to burn.

With too little moisture causing problems, too much causes problems as well. What has happened so far this year is more moisture has caused thicker stands of brush and grasses to grow, and eventually these become dry fuel to burn in wildfires.

To get ready for the inevitable fires, on April 1, the Mount Taylor Ranger District of Cibola National Forest will call its fire crews to active duty, Pacheco said. Fire personnel include the district's 20-person hotshot crew, the 40 person Acoma crew, two engine companies with three firefighters assigned to each engine and the five-person initial attack crew. Each crew member must go through physical training and advanced firefighting techniques.

Pacheco said after the Mount Sedgwick Fire last year, he's hoping for a mild fire season. "I think we'll be playing in other people's back yards this year," Pacheco said.

In normal years the fire season will last until July, when the monsoon rains begins. The monsoons usually last through August and then in September the second fire season starts, Pacheco said.