{"id":23568,"date":"2025-02-12T22:56:34","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T05:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/smoke-in-the-air-the-forest-service-is-burning-piles-of-debris\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:38:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:38:58","slug":"smoke-in-the-air-the-forest-service-is-burning-piles-of-debris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/smoke-in-the-air-the-forest-service-is-burning-piles-of-debris\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoke in the air? The Forest Service is burning piles of debris"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=3b3690a6-ef9b-540e-b546-3d0656f53a55&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1418\" height=\"1022\" alt=\"Smoke in the air during a prescribed burn on Sept. 24 at Salter Y. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Smoke in the air during a prescribed burn on Sept. 24 at Salter Y. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Over the next two days, the U.S. Forest Service will be burning piles of debris near McPhee Campground and Haycamp Mesa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese are pile burns, not broadcast prescribed fire,\u201d said Lorena Williams, the Forest Service\u2019s media contact, in an email. \u201cPiles are built either by hand or using equipment during forestry operations or for recreation management.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, Feb. 12, the Forest Service burned a single pile adjacent to McPhee Campground. That debris was collected during annual recreation management, Williams said, and the fire was extinguished by the end of the day.<\/p>\n<p>Burns at Haycamp Mesa on Feb. 13 will be over a \u201cvery large area,\u201d said Williams.<\/p>\n<p>There are \u201c150 small and medium-sized piles are across roughly 60 acres\u201d up there, leftover from the sale of Lucky Jack timber, said Williams.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe incoming winter storm creates ideal conditions because we extinguish the piles by end of shift prior to snowfall,\u201d Williams said. \u201cSnow currently on the ground further limits spread during the burn operations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>An emergency alert from Montezuma County\u2019s system around 11 a.m. on Feb. 12 said \u201cFire crews are on the scene for control,\u201d and \u201cFire and Dispatch are aware of these burns,\u201d so no need to report smoke in the air.<\/p>\n<p>Come spring, Williams said the Forest Service will \u201cevaluate favorable conditions for broadcast prescribed fire projects.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s not a prescribed burn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,60,29,549],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-united-states-forest-service"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23568","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=23568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78182,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23568\/revisions\/78182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23568"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}