{"id":101288,"date":"2018-02-20T21:37:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T04:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dolores-district-burns-slash-piles-near-mancos\/"},"modified":"2018-02-20T21:37:32","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T04:37:32","slug":"dolores-district-burns-slash-piles-near-mancos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dolores-district-burns-slash-piles-near-mancos\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolores District burns slash piles near Mancos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Jim
Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal<br><br>Firefighters work to extinguish a brush fire near Mancos in 2017.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Dolores Ranger District is burning slash piles on about 250 acres north of Mancos this week as part of the cleanup effort after a summer thinning project.<\/hardreturn><\/p>\n

District Fire Management Officer Pat Seekins said fire crews have been working on the controlled burn \u201coff and on\u201d for about three weeks, and on Tuesday they started burning what they believe will be the last remaining piles for this winter. Weather permitting, he said he hopes to be done with the project this week.<\/p>\n

Most of the forest roads in the area, which is located near the Millwood Road north of Joe Moore Reservoir, are closed for the winter, and Seekins said no new closures are planned as a result of the burn.<\/p>\n

The district typically hires contractors to thin the forest during the summer, and they leave the debris from fallen trees, known as slash, in piles to be burned during the winter. Seekins said the snow on the ground helps keep the fires under control without making the wood too damp to burn. Firefighters burn one pile at a time and monitor each fire to make sure it stays contained.<\/p>\n

This year, the district fire crews waited longer than usual to clean up the slash piles due to a lack of snow, Seekins said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re kind of playing catch-up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, he said the district burned 98 acres of slash piles. Dave Grettenberg, the Dolores Ranger District Prescribed Fire Specialist, said he expected to be done with the rest by Friday.<\/p>\n

Like other types of prescribed burns, Seekins said slash pile burning is intended to help mitigate wildfire risks during the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt reduces the amount of slash that\u2019s available to burn in a wildfire,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Seekins said he expects more wildfires in 2018 after the dry winter, although he said he won\u2019t be able to accurately predict how bad the fire season will be until about mid-April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

or road closures planned<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,83,549],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mancos","tag-united-states-forest-service"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101288"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}