{"id":98665,"date":"2018-07-19T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/unforeseen-breaks-helped-firefighters-during-416-fire\/"},"modified":"2018-07-19T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T11:00:00","slug":"unforeseen-breaks-helped-firefighters-during-416-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/unforeseen-breaks-helped-firefighters-during-416-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Unforeseen breaks helped firefighters during 416 Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n

Wildland firefighters liken their work to poker hands, and when it comes to Southwest Colorado, odds are you\u2019re going to be dealt some ugly cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked with an incident commander who told me: \u2018It\u2019s tough to get a call from Southwest Colorado. Given the terrain, the weather and the density of the forest, we\u2019re almost guaranteed to be delivered a bad hand,\u2019\u201d said Butch Knowlton, director of La Plata County\u2019s Office of Emergency Management.<\/p>\n

Knowlton spoke to about 50 homeowners who attended a meeting Tuesday night organized by Firewise of Southwest Colorado<\/a> to recap what went right and what went wrong in combating the 416 Fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese teams come in with a lot of resources and a lot of knowledge,\u201d Knowlton said, \u201cand they like to win. The incident commander told me: \u2018I\u2019m afraid of losing because I\u2019m not going to have a good hand because of your terrain, your weather, your forest.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite forces of nature that make the San Juan National Forest a firefighter\u2019s nightmare, several things broke in favor of the teams and helped keep the 416 Fire from getting out of hand.<\/p>\n

The first big break came with the timing of when the fire started: June 1.<\/p>\n

No other fires in Colorado or New Mexico were burning that day, Knowlton said. He said federal officials provided every resource and piece of equipment the initial team handling the fire had requested.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we needed this plane, we got it; if we needed that plane, we got it. However many crews we wanted, we got them. The next day we had an air force,\u201d Knowlton said. \u201cIf the fire had happened four or five days later, we would have ended up competing with several fires in Colorado and New Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we didn\u2019t have that good hand that day, what you would have seen is substantially more growth in those early days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next break, Knowlton said, was the defensible space homeowners in Falls Creek and others north and west of Hermosa had created to protect their homes from wildfire.<\/p>\n

Not only did the work protect homes, he said, but it also gave firefighters room to maneuver. That fire-mitigation work done ahead of time was a main reason no homes were lost.<\/p>\n

Climate change, Knowlton said, is likely to increase the odds that Southwest Colorado will have more fire seasons like this year\u2019s, and it makes it more imperative than ever that homeowners create defensible space around their homes and structures.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople need to realize this climate change deal is real and do fire mitigation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Richard Bustamante, fire management officer for the San Juan National Forest, said the next break firefighters caught was the arrival of the remnants of Hurricane Bud, that \u2013 in June, the driest month in the region \u2013 offered about five days of respite from the dry conditions.<\/p>\n

Crews made the most of their time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt bought us enough time to put in a fire line and use direct suppression in Junction Creek,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The unexpected rains also gave crews time to build lines to protect Purgatory Resort, he said.<\/p>\n

In the end, Bustamante said the breaks helped firefighters meet their three priorities for the 416 Fire:<\/p>\n

Ensure the safety of firefighters.<\/em>Hold the fire to the west side of U.S. Highway 550.<\/em>Protect the densely developed area around Hermosa from the flames.<\/em><\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Ensure the safety of firefighters.<\/em>Hold the fire to the west side of U.S. Highway 550.<\/em>Protect the densely developed area around Hermosa from the flames.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hurricane Bud\u2019s remnants, timing of fire\u2019s start helped offset tough natural setting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[2838,5427,13,445,199,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-98665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-416-fire","tag-fire-blog","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-newsletter-lead","tag-san-juan-national-forest","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98665","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=98665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98665"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=98665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}