As the Las Conchas Fire, already one of the largest forest fires in state history, grows, so does the effort to fight it.
A little more than 24 hours after the wildfire ignited in the Jemez Mountains, local crews were joined by an elite wildfire management team, and more fire crews, equipment and other support are expected to begin flowing into the state from other fires, including the gargantuan Wallow Fire in eastern Arizona.
A water truck sprays along the road in Los Alamos Canyon as workers clear the forest of brush and fallen fuel wood near the ice skating rink to help slow down the fire on Tuesday. (Jim Thompson/Journal)
The number of available firefighters could reach 600 to 800 today, and might even climb to 1,000, eventually, according to deputy incident commander Mike Bradley.
Fire crews are working from all directions, building fire lines by hand, burning out areas to create spaces and dumping water on the fire. Aircraft were grounded Monday afternoon and night due to winds but were back up on Tuesday.
Bradley said he expects the Las Conchas Fire to grow indefinitely.
“We need to look at it in terms of this fire season. We saw what happened to the Wallow Fire, we saw what happened to the Horseshoe Two Fire, we saw what happened to the Monument Fire,” Bradley said, referring to Arizona fires. “There’s no reason to have any other assumptions than that this has a huge amount of potential. The fuel conditions are the same and the weather conditions are the same.”
The fire is getting large enough that the responsibility for fighting it will be split, north and south, among two Type 1 incident management teams, which take on the most severe wildfires.
Bradley’s team, led by Joe Reinarz, has responded to numerous wildfires and emergencies such as the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. The southern Type 1 team will be led by Duggar Hughes.
Much of the help for the Las Conchas Fire will come from the Wallow, Monument and Horseshoe Two fires in Arizona. Those fires are still active, but Bradley said they are all in their final stages.
Bradley’s team’s incident command post is at Redondo Meadows north of Jemez Springs. A small, temporary city with a mess hall, bathrooms, offices and lots of tents is being built as crews’ lives will be centered there until the fire is under control.
But that hasn’t been convenient in terms of getting crews to the fire.
“One of the problems that we have is between where our base camp is and other portions of this fire, we have a three-hour travel time, so we lose six hours of work time just trying to get crews out there,” Bradley said.
He said smaller camps will begin to spring up so crews don’t have to travel so far.
Most of the efforts are being centered on the northern section of the fire, since that’s the way the fire has been heading.
State Forestry Division spokesman Dan Ware said the largest forest fire in state history was the Ponil Complex Fire, which burned 92,500 acres near Cimarron in 2002.
— This article appeared on page A6 of the Albuquerque Journal
Photo Credit – Jim Thompson/Journal
Cutline – A water truck sprays along the road in Los Alamos Canyon as workers clear the forest of brush and fallen fuel wood near the ice skating rink to help slow down the fire on Tuesday.
Reprint story -- Email the reporter at jrodriguez@abqjournal.com.
