Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Forest Service was responsible for largest fire in New Mexico history

Something New To Bitch About..






05/28/22
The Forest Service says it was responsible for both the blazes that merged late last month and created the largest fire in New Mexico history.

The agency said Friday that its fire investigators determined the Calf Canyon Fire was started by a holdover fire, or sleeper fire, from a federal pile burn that concluded Jan. 29.

Though crews monitored the fire for a couple days following the conclusion of the burn, the Forest Service said, it remained dormant and survived three winter snow events before it reignited and escaped containment lines in April and was “significantly” spread by a wind event.

The Calf Canyon Fire then merged with the Hermits Peak Fire, which was also started by an escaped federal prescribed burn, to cause New Mexico’s biggest-ever fire. 



“The pain and suffering of New Mexicans caused by the actions of the U.S. Forest Service – an agency that is intended to be a steward of our lands – is unfathomable,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) said in a statement.

“I appreciate the U.S. Forest Service assuming responsibility for the federal actions that caused this terrible crisis.”

The governor said the fire, which is still ongoing, has destroyed hundreds of homes, cost state and local governments millions and displaced tens of thousands of residents in the state. 



The Forest Service said last week it would pause prescribed burns on National Forest System land for 90 days to reevaluate its policies.



"The Santa Fe National Forest is 100 percent focused on suppressing these fires with the support of the Type 1 incident management teams who are fully prepared to manage complex, all-risk situations,” Santa Fe National Forest Supervisor Debbie Cress said in a Friday statement.

“Our commitment is to manage the public lands entrusted to us by improving the forest’s resilience to the many stressors they are facing, including larger, hotter wildfires, historic levels of drought, rising temperatures, and insects and disease.”

Grisham has asked President Biden to direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for all the fire-related recovery efforts in the state.

Who will pay for all that?

fuqkers need to be in jail.

Must have been one hell of a burn pile

While I’m not a fire scientist, I have a hard time believing that story. About the fire laying dormant that long.

A pile can smolder and burn for quite a while. One year I cleaned out a pile of square bales that my goats had been sleeping on for 2 or 3 years. You can imagine the piss and goat pills involved. I lit the pile in January and it didn't stop smoldering until April. Every now and then I would push it up and stir it with the front end loader or it would have burned longer.

How much CO2 does a 300,000 acre forest fire generate (not to mention particulates, etc)???

I believe I read somewhere the Indians would keep a smoldering pine knot wrapped in moss, dirt and bark for weeks on end when travelling.

Actually, it is not that uncommon.

Piles of wood, compost, etc. don't even need a fire to start burning.

That's why you don't stack green hay fresh from the field in the barn quickly after baling. Been lots of barns burn that way.

Spontaneous combustion is common with the right conditions. One that has a smoldering fire inside is just a matter of time.

The first year that I worked for the Forest Service (as a summer hire) was in 1966. I was stationed on the Oregon Coast and essentially patrolled the parks and recreation areas from Honeyman State Park, south the bridge at Coos Bay. My job was to insure that all campfires were contained and out, when each visiter left. My boss called me in one day and with another fellow he drove us up to a clearcut that had been burned the fall before. As we stood on the landing, and looked over the edge 500 feet or so below, we could see a stump smoldering, that had rekindled after being burned the previous fall. We took our pack packs, tools, and a couple of metal backpack pumps and headed down there, with instructions to be back up on top at 3 pm. A similar event occurred outside of Klamath Falls, Oregon a few years later on a burn that Weyerhaeuser Timber Company had done the previous fall. This time I had a light truck full of water and drove nearly to the firee. Average precipitation on the coast was typically 60 inches or more and far less in the Klamath Falls area.

Some years ago, we were going hunting in a December hunt. There was about a foot of snow. We were driving a single track road at night over a pass to meet some other guys and we kept seeing a glow in the sky. We came around a turn and maybe 200 yds up a draw was a large dead tree in flames. There certainly hadn't been any lightning so the only explanation was a hunter's campfire. However, there were no tracks in the snow from the road in that direction and the snow had been on the ground for a week or more. It would have had to work its way through the litter on the ground to reach the tree roots, then burn it's way up the tree. Who knows how long that would have taken.

The Forest DisService burned up a game preserve, hundreds of acres of critical elk spring grazing and calving habitat here by letting a prescribed fire spread. The wind was howling, 25+ mph, with red flag fire conditions only one county over, yet they thought it prudent to burn anyway. Then the fire spotted ahead and burned through the preserve, burned all the grass and up into the aspens. The best part is, they investigated themselves, and found that a target shooter started the fire. It was never found who the target shooter was, or where they were shooting. But the FS knows their fire, set during 25mph winds, upwind from the wildfire, that set spot fires downwind, did not burn the preserve. A bullet did.

When I was logging we would light slash piles in the winter, covering the piles with with an old lumber cover. Waited for a good snow fall and would light the pile. The cover prevented any melting snow from extinguishing the fire before it got established. Fires could potentially burn through the winter. Oftentimes we would find them still punking around come spring. Always extinguished what was still burning come spring. This was on private land timber sales.

The condition of Federal forests is appalling. BLM and Forest Service do little to no management. I am still involved in the forest/timber industry and it is sickening to see what can and should be done as far as thinning and maintaining breaks. Prescribed fire is a valuable tool and should not be excluded but there is a time and place for everything. Like I said we always checked our burn piles in the spring.

The money is in the suppression end. If you have ever deployed on a large federal fire your jaw would drop in regards to the waste of resources and money. Lots of staging and standing around. If half the money spent on suppression was funneled into thinning/timber production we would not be facing these large fires.


Forest Service was founded on the doctrine of multiple use, which are timber, grazing, watershed, wildlife and recreation, if my memory serves me right. They are now the nations largest fire department.

The Forest Service was also responsible for the Cerro Grande fire in 2000 that burned up Los Alamos.

What we need is more government.

The 148,000 acre Archie Creek fire burned the N. Umpqua watershed in September 2020. We were still putting out hold over fires in the summer of 2021.

It is, for some reason, SOP for debris to be piled up and burned, rather than left on the ground to decay, by logging companies. These piles are usually lit in mid-October and will often smolder well into January. Valleys are filled with smoke for a couple of weeks when these are lit up. This practice is mandated by the government and yes, that would be the same government which levies carbon taxes and bleats piteously about our carbon footprint. GD

What you didn't mention, was that the Calf Canyon had re-ignited before the Las Dispensas "controlled burn" (which became the Hermit's Peak fire) was even started.
The crew monitoring the Calf Canyon was pulled off when the Las Dispensas blew up - nobody evidently checked back until it blew up, also.
The top picture is ~ 35 miles from my house, the bottom picture is ~ 10 miles from my house, where the fire burned through the Las Dispensas Cemetary.
Control is supposed to be 50% this morning, we'll see if the lines continue to hold. Predicted winds of 25+ and gusts over 60 for today.

The USFS stopped issuing firewood permits to people who wanted to go onto forest land to cut dead wood for home use.

Now all the dry fuel just lies there waiting for a fire event.