Four Corners Fire Season Set to Ignite 

A warm dry winter has fire chiefs urging care and caution ahead of what could be a long fire season. You're watching the Local News Network brought to you by Sky Ute Casino and Sirious, Texas Barbecue. I'm Connor Shrieve. After fires in Southern California, Durango Fire Chief Randy Black issued a warning to Four Corners residents to be ready for wildfire. Wildfire Battalion Chief Scott Nielsen says, the California fires indicate that fire season is a misnomer.

It's really all about the vegetation and the, the drought or lack of drought until this upcoming storm, like you know, Plata county's in prime conditions to burn with the wind and the lack of snow in the amount of dead grass and fuels in the landscape.

The Durango Fire District uses data points and conditions from stations across the region to make a long-term forecast.

But as we look at the long-term, we're looking at the drought, you know, potential storms, looking at soil moisture, fuel moisture, live vegetation moisture, and just general weather patterns. And, you know, it's hard to predict a fire season in, in advance, but in the winter we're having right now, it definitely leads us to believe that this summer could be, be a challenging one.

Recent snowstorms have barely improved snowpack totals. Snowpack in the San Miguel, Dolores, Animus, and San Juan River Basin is at 64% of its 30 year median. From 2019 to 2024 snowpack never dropped below 82% of median and was usually over 90%. Water storage levels are in better shape with above average totals in the Jackson Gulch, Lemon, and Via Cito reservoirs. Nielsen says risk levels can change pretty quickly.

2022, you know, it was a okay winter and a okay year before, and we had the Parents Peak Fire, the Pass Fire, Pigoza had the Plum Top Fire. And those are all, you know, type three incidents of the all, all three of those had incident management teams on 'em. One of 'em was a national incident management team. You know, we were, we were pretty scared. We were poised for a busy summer, and then right after the Parents Peak Fire it rained and it rained almost every day that summer. And there was really no significant fires for the next, that whole calendar year.

He says previous monsoons grew grasses, shrubs, and other fuels that the winter's dry conditions have desiccated. The dry conditions have grown so severe that they've forced the department to prepare differently than in years past.

We generally bring on 18 to 20 seasonals late April, early May. So this year, looking at the conditions we're going to bring seasonals on earlier. You know, in the, the good thing that we have around here of being able to do that is like we have some amazing partners. The other four fire, or other three fire districts, Little Plata County, they're, they have a similar mindset. They're preparing.

DFD recently hosted 160 firefighters for the Four Corners Wildfire Training Academy, two weeks of exercises for local and regional fire agencies to learn how to work together. If a wildfire does start Nielsen's confident in the region's ability to respond.

And we're lucky here, you know, we have, the US Forest Service has the tanker base here, which is a, that's a huge asset like we've seen in 2020, 2018, 2017. I mean, having a, a national tanker base within, you know, two minute flight time from the city of Durango is a huge asset.

As for fire mitigation closer to home, Nielsen says, protecting your home is protecting your neighborhood.

You know, there's a lot of Home Ignition guidelines that go out to a hundred feet and not a lot of places in Durango in the county do homeowners own that full hundred feet. You know that a hundred feet might be two neighbors down's living room. So if you can do your home hardening, you know, keep the dry vegetation away from your house, do not put mulch by your house, you know, keep in the fire season or dry times, keep firewood and combustible things away from your house.

Close your windows and doors when you leave the house and keep dry fuels like wood piles as far away from your home as possible. You can learn more about this and other stories at Durangolocal.news. Thanks for watching this edition of The Local News Network. I'm Connor Shrieve.