{"id":39547,"date":"2022-07-11T15:38:58","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T21:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/firefighters-say-10-acre-cox-canyon-fire-likely-started-from-smoldering-lightning-strike\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:50:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:50:35","slug":"firefighters-say-10-acre-cox-canyon-fire-likely-started-from-smoldering-lightning-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/firefighters-say-10-acre-cox-canyon-fire-likely-started-from-smoldering-lightning-strike\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefighters say 10-acre Cox Canyon Fire likely started from smoldering lightning strike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=972be983-17b6-5352-86a8-84505d07897e&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"525\" height=\"368\" alt=\"\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>The Cox Canyon Fire on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation east of Cortez was likely caused by a lightning strike last week, according to fire officials.<\/p>\n<p>The blaze was announced about 3:30 p.m. Saturday via the Durango Interagency Fire Dispatch Facebook page, and by 6 p.m. it had grown to 10 acres. The <a href=\"https:\/\/gacc.nifc.gov\/rmcc\/incident_info.php\" id=\"link-9a3482e092999712f0a07f6946a30ee2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center<\/a> said the fire was discovered Thursday at 7:25 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Smoke remained visible Sunday from U.S. Highway 550, in the area of Cox Canyon south of Bondad Hill.<\/p>\n<p>Fire officials believe fire started from a lightning strike last week. In such cases, a lightning strike can cause a small fire that smolders for a few days before igniting into a larger fire.<\/p>\n<p>The fire was burning in sagebrush, juniper and cedar trees.<\/p>\n<p>Fire crews Sunday were mopping up and working toward containment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re just working to suppress the fire, contain it, and doing some mopping up of those hot spots,\u201d said Lindsay Box, spokeswoman for Southern Ute Tribal Council Affairs.<\/p>\n<p>Stage 1 fire restrictions remain enacted until conditions improve.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-340de4b0278c0ed56a82df0f2cf99fc7\"><a href=\"mailto:tbrown@durangoherald.com\">tbrown@durangoherald.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>discovered Thursday south of Durango on tribal lands<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[350,28,1235,629,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-ignacio","tag-southern-ute-indian-tribe","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39547","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=39547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84365,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39547\/revisions\/84365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39547"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}