{"id":17038,"date":"2025-08-06T15:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T15:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-stoner-mesa-fire-continues-to-grow-cause-of-fire-confirmed\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:03:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:03:29","slug":"update-stoner-mesa-fire-continues-to-grow-cause-of-fire-confirmed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-stoner-mesa-fire-continues-to-grow-cause-of-fire-confirmed\/","title":{"rendered":"Update: Stoner Mesa Fire continues to grow, cause of fire confirmed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Stoner Mesa Fire on Aug. 5 was burning in the San Juan National Forest about 20 miles northeast of Dolores. (Courtesy U.S. Forest Service)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Stoner Mesa Fire, burning in the San Juan National Forest northeast of Dolores, has spread to over 500 acres and is predicted to \u201cbe with us for a long time,\u201d according to information provided by the Forest Service on Wednesday around 5:35 p.m.<\/p>\n

The fire has forced mandatory evacuations including the Mavreeso Campground and Taylor Mesa and Stoner Mesa roads, and was reportedly caused by lightning. Evacuation status has not changed as of this time.<\/p>\n

The fire\u2019s behavior is reported as \u201cextreme,\u201d as it burns mixed conifer and \u201csubstantial dead and standing and down trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Stoner Mesa Fire is going to be with us for a while,\u201d Dolores District Ranger Nicholas Mustoe said. \u201cThe forest type and rugged terrain limit what tactics can be effective. We will take every available action to limit the footprint of the Stoner Mesa Fire when and where we can be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dolores Ranger District is reported to be \u201cworking closely\u201d with the San Juan Type 3 Incident Management Team. They are working on developing a suppression plan for the blaze, and multiple teams of forest and fire management personnel flew in helicopters today to create a strategy for fighting the fire.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the San Juan Interagency Hotshot Crew will be on site to engage the fire near Taylor Mesa and begin assessing structures ahead of the fire, \u201cout of an abundance of caution,\u201d the Forest Service said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Stoner Mesa Fire was lightning-caused and first reported on July 28 by Benchmark Lookout. During the next several days, helicopters dropped 7,000 gallons of water on the fire and inserted firefighters,\u201d the Forest Service said. \u201cThe crew worked water into the fire until lightning forced them to return to their helicopter. Heavy dead and down trees, standing snags and frequent daily lightning posed significant risk to firefighters on the ground. With firefighter safety in mind, fire managers made the decision to utilize aircraft for patrol. The fire area received intermittent rain and no smoke was visible on the fire for four days until, on August 5, the fire experienced significant growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier on Wednesday, the San Juan Team 8, a local Type 3 Incident Management Team, was reassigned to the Stoner Mesa after wrapping up operations on the Elkhorn Fire, burning north of Durango.<\/p>\n

The fire is about 20 miles northeast of Dolores and west of Rico. It is \u201cexhibiting extreme fire behavior\u201d as it moved east, according to a news release from the U.S. Forest Service.<\/p>\n

The orders for mandatory evacuations include Forest Service Roads 686, 545 and all connecting roads and the Mavreeso, West Dolores and Burro Bridge campgrounds along the West Dolores River.<\/p>\n

The Forest Service added that the Dolores and Montezuma sheriffs assisted with evacuation efforts, including helicopters ensuring that campers and others in the area for recreation were removed.<\/p>\n

\"The
The fire burned 250 to 300 acres as of Tuesday evening, though it had started only hours prior. (Screen capture via InciWeb)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

As of Tuesday at 8:19 p.m., it was reported that there were multiple airtankers, an air attack aerial supervision plane, two helicopters and firefighters on the scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fire is very remote and inaccessibility on foot or road due to heavy dead and down trees,\u201d the Forest Service said. \u201cAs of Tuesday evening, the fire is still actively burning and demonstrating extreme fire behavior in mixed conifer and aspen forest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Updates on the fire can be found by visiting the Stoner Mesa Fire website<\/a> at www.inciweb.wildfire.gov\/incident-information\/cosjf-stoner-mesa-fire.<\/p>\n

The Stoner Mesa Fire is one of three fires in Montezuma and Dolores counties. The Waters Canyon Fire, burning on the Ute Mountain Ute edge of Mesa Verde National Park, has burned about 200 acres. North of Cahone, the Sharp Canyon Fire has burned more than 400 acres, but officials expect to fully contain the fire\u2019s footprint this weekend.<\/p>\n

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The
The Stoner Mesa Fire as seen from County Road S on Tuesday evening. (Bailey Duran\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

predicted to be the biggest impact to nearby communities<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[44,28,60,29,199,2053,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-17038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dolores","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-san-juan-national-forest","tag-stoner","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17038","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=17038"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20530,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17038\/revisions\/20530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17038"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=17038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}