The Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon catastrophe entered a new phase last week, and the only thing I can compare it to is the term health officials use when trying to describe the current status of COVID-19.
The fire, now grinding through pieces of the hard-to-reach and harder-to-conquer Pecos Wilderness, is the equivalent of an endemic.
Despite all the effort of the past two-plus months, it’s likely going to continue, deep into the summer and perhaps longer.
No, it won’t be with us forever — all bad things must end — but the fire’s shelf life is far beyond what might’ve been expected or hoped for even a few weeks ago.
And even when it is finally quelled, either through the hard work of firefighters, the help of summer rain or by simply running out of available topography to consume, the factors that have kept it alive this long are going to stay with us for a long, long time.
“That fire that’s down in the Pecos Wilderness, it grew a lot,” operations section chief Jayson Coil said in a Friday briefing, describing the expansion Thursday during a three-day period of hot, dry weather and persistent wind. “It grew 5,000 acres. I would call that a lot. It’s moved west into terrain that’s difficult to access. There’s limited control options in that country and there’s a lot of dead trees.
“Looking at some of the aerial flights yesterday [Thursday], every bit of a third, maybe 50 percent, of the trees that were standing were dead,” Coil continued. “That country, it’s going to be hard for fire to get put out there, no matter how much rain you get. It [fire] can hide under a log, and then you get a drying trend …”
And poof … more forest up in smoke. Again.
Of all the many images that have come from the fire, some of the most instructive — and compelling — are not of the treetop-to-treetop relay race the blaze made in May; the fires that brought many of New Mexico’s small towns to their knees. They are heartbreaking but familiar.
The photos I’d never seen before were the images of acres and acres of dead trees in what once, presumably, was green forest land.
Sometimes, they are toppled over atop one another; huge, endless parapets of wood. Other times, there are entire vistas of trees that look like lonely gray lampposts, illuminating little but an ugly future.
When the fire made another run this week, that’s what fire officials reported: swamps of fuel that speak not of healthy land but reservoirs of receptive fuel that need only one thing — fire hiding under a log? — to lengthen the nightmare by who knows how many days or weeks or months.
Beyond the mistakes that were made in igniting the prescribed burns that went kerflooey in April (and earlier), plus the no-luck-except-bad-luck weather that helped push the fire to incredible proportions in May, that’s the next question forest officials and New Mexico residents must contend with: Is there any way to make the forests healthy again?
I’m betting Forest Service officials will answer: Yes, there is. As they have in the past, they’ll contend prescribed burns, done well, can help reduce risk and create a better environment in the wilderness, Pecos or otherwise. Problem is, their credibility, if not completely wrecked by how the separate Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon disasters began, is at minimum severely damaged, at least in the view of the public.
But the flip side — letting local communities have a bigger and greater say in how nearby forests are managed — doesn’t exactly bring comfort. Why? How many municipalities do you know are happy with the way their trash pickup or park maintenance or long-term planning are handled? Hell, in these bizarre days, you can’t get a county commission to agree to certify a clean primary election, let alone create an informed plan on maintaining land.
OK, maybe that’s not fair: Equating Otero County’s leaders to rational, logical thought is a cheap shot to the rest of New Mexico. But really, can you imagine finding consensus on how to log/prescribe burn/manage a nearby forest?
And yet, someday, somehow, we’re going to need to find a way.
When this is over, forest managers, environmentalists, politicians, those who support increased logging and a lot of homeowners whose kitchen-window views are full of soot and disaster, must find solutions, no matter how difficult.
I doubt any of them will be happy by what’s decided, but one thing is for sure. We know this can’t continue.
Even though it is.
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June 19, 2022 at 07:15AM
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This can't continue, even though it is - Santa Fe New Mexican
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