{"id":92850,"date":"2019-07-19T22:03:16","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T22:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/burnouts-on-441-fire-a-success-forest-service-says\/"},"modified":"2019-07-19T22:03:16","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T22:03:16","slug":"burnouts-on-441-fire-a-success-forest-service-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/burnouts-on-441-fire-a-success-forest-service-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Burnouts on 441 Fire a success, Forest Service says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n

Firefighters were successful with burnout operations on the 441 Fire north of Durango on Missionary Ridge, the U.S. Forest Service said Friday.<\/p>\n

Favorable weather conditions allowed burnouts along the First Fork and the Red Creek trails, which secured the southwest edge of the fire line.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fire is doing good work cleaning up the dead and down logs and eliminating some of the snags within the fire perimeter,\u201d Incident Commander Trainee Brit Quinlan said in a prepared statement.<\/p>\n

The 441 Fire, believed to be caused by a lightning strike, was discovered July 13<\/a>, about 5 miles east of Durango on the San Juan National Forest.<\/p>\n

Because of the dead and downed trees in an area of the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire, the Forest Service let the fire burn fuels that could feed more severe wildfires.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fire is located in an area that will allow fire to play out its natural process in our fire-adaptive ecosystem,\u201d the Forest Service said in a statement this week. \u201cThe 441 Fire will meet a variety of resource objectives while protecting values at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Forest Service is attempting to keep the fire in a 2,000-acre area. Crews conducted burnout operations Thursday<\/a>, which made the fire and associated smoke more visible around Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

As of Friday morning, the fire had burned nearly 300 acres, the Forest Service said.<\/p>\n

Small burnout operations continued Friday, which will create an anchor point to provide firefighters a safe location to continue work up the trail as the fire grows. Smoke is expected around the Florida River corridor, as well as areas around Vallecito Reservoir.<\/p>\n

Once burnouts are completed, crews will remain in the area to hold and monitor the fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur main concerns for firefighters is the steep terrain and snags,\u201d Operations Trainee Noah Daniels said in a statement.<\/p>\n

About 44 firefighters and support personnel are on scene to ensure the fire stays within the predetermined boundary. Nighttime smoke is expected to settle into the valleys overnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Missionary Ridge grows to 300 acres<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5737,5736,6205,5735,5923,5896,5756],"tags":[28,2161,199,549,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-92850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-local-news","category-missionary-ridge","category-news","category-san-juan-national-forest","category-united-states-forest-service","category-wildfire","tag-headlines","tag-missionary-ridge","tag-san-juan-national-forest","tag-united-states-forest-service","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92850","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=92850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92850"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=92850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}