Forest Service begins prescribed burn season in Santa Fe National Forest with new safety precautions

The U.S. Forest Service is conducting pile burns in the Santa Fe and Carson national forests and after the devastating Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire in 2022, the agency is relying more on technology and standardized practices to prevent pile burns from turning into the wildfires they’re designed to prevent.

The Calf Canyon Fire began with a pile burn in January 2022. For months, the pile smoldered beneath the ground, dormant but not out, until it sparked a full-fledged wildfire and connected to the Hermits Peak Fire to become the largest wildfire in state history. The Hermits Peak Fire also began as a prescribed fire in the Santa Fe National Forest, before escaping containment.

The combined fires burned 340,000 acres of northern New Mexico and upended lives in communities like Mora, where flooding related to the fire’s aftermath continues to create problems for residents trying to recover from the fire’s destruction.

“It was a terrible tragedy,” said Terrance Gallegos, who works for the Santa Fe National Forest. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I wish I couldn’t have done something to have prevented it all. But I think just the things that we’re doing now, we’re really trying to make sure that something like that doesn’t happen again.”

The Forest Service on Monday began to set three pile burns in the Santa Fe National Forest.

The agency also has started numerous pile burns in the Carson National Forest. In the east side of the forest, the Forest Service is focused on the 1.5 million-acre Enchanted Circle Landscape, which is “one of the most at-risk landscapes in the country and a priority of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy,” according to a Forest Service news release.

Before a pile burn, a forest is thinned so that wildfires will have less fuel to burn. The resulting mounds of limbs and removed trees are what give a pile burn its name.

“We’re trying to thin out the canopy so that when a wildfire comes through, it’ll stay on the ground, and it won’t run to the crowns of the trees and kill everything,” Gallegos said.

Thinning gives the remaining trees less competition for water and sunlight, helping the trees become more drought resilient. The practice also creates field breaks, where firefighters can gain access to fight wildfires.

Small tree branches are added to piles for burning, while trunks of thinned trees are offered to the local community for firewood. The burn piles are typically 7 feet wide, 7 feet long and 5 or 6 feet tall.

The agency had a 90-day pause on prescribed fires after Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak to reevaluate its practices. New safety precautions put in place after the pause include written plans for monitoring and responding to the burn if it escalates, more items on the pre-ignition checklist and burn approval no more than 24 hours in advance. Firefighters now have to be within a half hour of moderate- or high-complexity prescribed burns. Pile burns are considered low complexity, so contingency resources can be farther away.

Before setting a fire, the Forest Service has to account for drought and consider personnel capabilities, making sure that everyone involved in the burn has enough experience to conduct it. Firefighter fatigue is also a new consideration.

“All the people that are doing prescribed fires are the same people that rush into your community, to protect your community, when there’s a wildfire,” Gallegos said. “They’re all the same people, and so you have to consider fatigue. How bad of a fire season has it been?”

The Forest Service also is trying to increase communication with the public and make sure the local communities can find out where the smoke from prescribed fires will travel.

Additionally, public meetings before any prescribed burn are the new norm for the Santa Fe National Forest. One person came to the public meeting for the two Coyote Ranger District burns, but 20 people attended the Cuba Ranger District burn, Gallegos said. The rangers also are checking in with county commissioners before prescribed fire season and briefing the state’s congressional delegation.

The Santa Fe National Forest is relying on new technology to better monitor prescribed burns, including new spatial modeling to better plan and use of infrared drones to check for heat. Rangers still are checking the traditional way — through visual cues and physical touch — to determine if a prescribed fire is out, but they also have handheld infrared monitors to detect heat.

Forest Service begins prescribed burn season in Santa Fe National Forest

“We’re triple-checking stuff now, in light of the holdover pile burns that got away from us,” Gallegos said. “That’s something that we’re committed to doing.”