The southwest US is burning

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The fire near Las Vegas (New Mexico) began April 6 when the Bureau of Land Management set an intentional prescribed burn that became a wildfire named Hermits Peak Fire. Bummer. California has reached out to the local Indian (Oops, Native American) population for controlled burn guidance, finally! They have been doing this since the dawn of Cali civilization.
 
The fire near Las Vegas (New Mexico) began April 6 when the Bureau of Land Management set an intentional prescribed burn that became a wildfire named Hermits Peak Fire. Bummer. California has reached out to the local Indian (Oops, Native American) population for controlled burn guidance, finally! They have been doing this since the dawn of Cali civilization.
Controlled burn by the forest 'service' got out of hand and nearly burned the entire lab and town down.
Cerro Grande Fire - Wikipedia
 
Some guy lit a fire near my friends house south of Albuquerque and they had to evacuate. I about got hit by a lit blunt some jerk threw out their window on my motorcycle on the freeway. It's the wild west here
 
So NM fire authorities are 2 for 2 in uncontrolled burns. Ouch
 
There was a great deal of propeller driven aircraft traffic at the airport here the other afternoon. We have a fire bomber loading station here at the airport. First thing I did was go outside and look for smoke. Luckily nothing visible.
 
It's gonna be a heck of a year for fires, especially in Arizona. We saw our wettest monsoon on record last year, so there's lots of fuel just waiting to burn. My department doesn't typically participate in prescribed burns -- that's usually the Forest Service, State, or BLM -- so I can't speak intelligently on that particular subject. Maybe @go-fish can chime in and take us to school.
 
New fire in the San Mateo Mtns. A very, very cool desolate place that I've backpacked extensively and now Jeep. So sad.
 
My fire fighting friends in Southern Colorado refuse to help New Mexico firemen. Apparently, New Mexico is very inconsiderate of their fire folks. So much so that many here refuse to help. Let em burn they say.
I know the forest service does a lot of controlled burns. They do a great job and include the local fire departments in the fun. They get the fires put out on the first day typically around here.
New Mexico fire seems to wait 3-4 days before they try to contain and extinguish. As I am told.

Burn it up. We have been messing with the fire for a long time. The forests need to burn to regenerate.
 
Burn it up. We have been messing with the fire for a long time. The forests need to burn to regenerate.
100% agree. Letting fuels build up over years and years not only makes the forests less healthy, but creates a dangerous urban interface. The 2003 Aspen Fire in AZ is a good example of that. Almost an entire town burned down on Mt. Lemmon.
 
I had my home and town threatened in 2020. Came within a few miles of town. Still didn't hardly touch the over grown forest. There will be more to come.
 
100% agree. Letting fuels build up over years and years not only makes the forests less healthy, but creates a dangerous urban interface. The 2003 Aspen Fire in AZ is a good example of that. Almost an entire town burned down on Mt. Lemmon.

Its refreshing to hear folks talk that actually understand fires and fuel loads. You can’t spend decades preventing fires then act surprised when you have uncontrollable ones. Routine burning needs to happen or else this will be the norm.
 
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Parked at the nearby airport yesterday evening
 
Another solution to burning the forests is to allow logging to happen. There has been a lot of resistance to letting folks log the forests.
I totally understand the "want" to not log old growth trees. And I agree with not cutting down 200 year old trees. However, the forest needs thinning. It's only a small "alternative" to prescribed burns.
If you prescribe a burn in the full mountain woods, it will be out of control in no time. So that approach doesn't really work too well.
We have some forest prescribes, but they are put out quickly and are typically on Ranch land and not public lands.

The great red woods literally depend on fires in some ways. Yet, california protects them and doesn't let fire get anywhere around those giants. In some ways, I get that too. They are disappearing due to climate change.

Not democrat climate change. But Scientific climate change that has been happening since this planet was made/existed.
 
Seems that a lot of folks seem to think that we are ruining the forests by timber cutting and other means.
I don’t think our Native Americans went and stomped the fires out 200 years ago before we ‘ruined’ it . Deer and elk can hide in thick timber but need open grassy areas to graze. A certain amount of fires is beneficial.
Yote
 
Most homes in America are built from wood.
Primarily only coastal areas are cinderblock / concrete construction. All due to rot and termite's. Mostly rot.
If we cut no wood to not harm our forests where did we get all the wood from? Canadian forests!
I ride my dirtbike on all kinds of past forest service logging cuts. They will regrow and in 100 years you will never know there was a road there. Yes, 100 years, the mountains repair themselves much slower than lower elevations.
I don't get the crowd that says don't cut down extremely small portions of our VAST forests. Instead, let's just let them all rot after dying from beetle kill. Colorado doesn't make the best fire decisions either. The more californicated we become the more these decisions will get worse.
 
Drove past the Cerro Pelado fire in the Jemez, my old stomping grounds when I lived and worked in Los Alamos. Holy cow. Never seen anything like it. Raging out of freaking control. Just 3 hours later on the return trip, it had grown visibly, feeding on 60 mph gusts and single digit/low teens humidiy. That is the forecast for the next week. I'm seriously getting sick of this. Logic tells me it's all going to burn in time.
Cerro Pelado Fire Update Friday, May 6, 2022
 
Drove past the Cerro Pelado fire in the Jemez, my old stomping grounds when I lived and worked in Los Alamos. Holy cow. Never seen anything like it. Raging out of freaking control. Just 3 hours later on the return trip, it had grown visibly, feeding on 60 mph gusts and single digit/low teens humidiy. That is the forecast for the next week. I'm seriously getting sick of this. Logic tells me it's all going to burn in time.
Cerro Pelado Fire Update Friday, May 6, 2022
“Raging and freaking out of control.” What exactly do you mean by this? Do you understand the tactics involved in wildland firefighting? I took a quick look at the map on the link you provided and didn’t see any towns nearby, just some campsites.

Do you also understand that it’s good to let fuels burn while crews can safely establish a fireline? I don’t know what time of day you saw the fire pick up, but if it was in the afternoon, that is normal and expected.
 
I'm no firefighter. It was in the afternoon. What do I mean by raging out of control? Sorry, all I can say I mean just what I said.
 
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