{"id":39288,"date":"2022-07-23T22:32:14","date_gmt":"2022-07-24T04:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mesa-verde-national-parks-long-fire-ignited-by-lightning-under-control\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:48:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:48:58","slug":"mesa-verde-national-parks-long-fire-ignited-by-lightning-under-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mesa-verde-national-parks-long-fire-ignited-by-lightning-under-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Mesa Verde National Park\u2019s Long Fire, ignited by lightning, under control"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=dcf11acd-bfb4-4cb1-a51e-11bc3367548f&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Durango Herald file&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;A 1-acre prescribed fire is planned from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 in the Chapin Mesa area of Mesa Verde National Park.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Durango Herald file&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;A 1-acre prescribed fire is planned from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 in the Chapin Mesa area of Mesa Verde National Park.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A 23-acre blaze that broke out Friday in Mesa Verde National Park, southwest of Chapin Mesa and Long Mesa, has not gained any ground and is expected to be fully contained by Sunday evening. The fire was caused by a lightning strike.<\/p>\n<p>Keith Krause, fire management officer at Mesa Verde National Park, said lightning caused three fires along the southern border of the park on Friday. Two of them were isolated to, essentially, a single tree and did not spread. But the Long Fire was sparked in a thick patch of juniper, which allowed it to grow to 23 acres.<\/p>\n<p>The fire hasn\u2019t spread any further as of Saturday afternoon and it isn\u2019t expected to progress any further, he said.<\/p>\n<p>One Type II IA crew and one engine crew were deployed to contain the fire, totaling 23 people on the scene.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were able to get it lined with retardant last night and had helicopters work it last night and again this morning,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2026 Everything is going well. We\u2019re looking at, hopefully, full containment by tomorrow evening. And then I\u2019ll get the crews back off before the rain and lightning comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Krause said late July is the prime fire season for Mesa Verde National Park.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe monsoon season came in early this year, but this is our prime fire season as far as we get the majority of our starts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-cc4854468e570887248123506482a3ce\"><a href=\"mailto:cburney@durangoherald.com\">cburney@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>expected to be fully contained by Sunday evening<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[364,350,28,173,414,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-community","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-mesa-verde-national-park","tag-weather","tag-weather-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39288","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=39288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84285,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39288\/revisions\/84285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39288"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}