{"id":98890,"date":"2018-07-07T16:41:46","date_gmt":"2018-07-07T22:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/flash-flood-watch-in-effect-for-416-fire-burn-scar\/"},"modified":"2018-07-07T16:41:46","modified_gmt":"2018-07-07T22:41:46","slug":"flash-flood-watch-in-effect-for-416-fire-burn-scar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/flash-flood-watch-in-effect-for-416-fire-burn-scar\/","title":{"rendered":"Flash flood watch in effect for 416 Fire burn scar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The 416 Fire burned in a mosaic pattern, leaving some stands of trees. A flash flood watch is in effect for the 416 Burn scar area Saturday and more rain is predicted in the next few days.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The risk of flooding near the 416 Fire is expected to persist Saturday.<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for the 416 Fire burn scar from noon until 9 p.m. Saturday.<\/p>\n

The potential for flooding prompted a pre-evacuation notice Friday night for 317 homes near the southern end of the fire in the Tripp Creek, Dyke Canyon, Hermosa Circle and Falls Creek Ranch areas, according to a La Plata County news release.<\/p>\n

\"La
La Plata County has issued pre-evacuation notices for areas south of the 416 Fire burn scar.<\/span>Courtesy of National Incident Management Organization<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The pre-evacuations notices are expected to stay in place as long as there is a risk of flooding, said Megan Graham, a spokeswoman for the county.<\/p>\n

Saturday, scattered storms could bring up to an inch of rain in some areas and soils in the burn scar are likely to have difficulty absorbing the precipitation, said Julie Malingowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe soils of the burn scar are extremely susceptible to sliding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The area could see afternoon thunderstorms through the middle of the week, according to NWS.<\/p>\n

Friday night, areas just west of Durango received an inch of rain, while some areas to the east of town didn\u2019t receive any precipitation, Malingowski said.<\/p>\n

The scattered storms Friday did not trigger any flooding near the burn scar, said Becky Shufelt, a spokeswoman with the National Incident Management Organization handling the 416 Fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t think we\u2019ve gotten enough rain to really warrant flooding conditions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The rain did help to quench the 54,129-acre fire, which has reached 50 percent containment and is no longer expanding, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we\u2019re seeing within the fire perimeter is just smoldering of the heavier fuels that will most likely continue to burn until the snow flies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The hot spots are on the fire\u2019s western side in, or near, wilderness areas, she said.<\/p>\n

The cooler, wet weather has allowed crews to focus on fire suppression repair and they are making good progress, she said.<\/p>\n

Hand lines and dozer lines leave marks across the landscape, so the majority of the work will be repairing those lines.<\/p>\n

Crews have also gathered more than 160 miles of fire hose and more than 100 water pumps and other fire equipment, she said.<\/p>\n

Crews and other resources are continuing to leave the fire each day for higher priority fires, she said. There are 338 people currently working on the fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach day that passes by, we are downsizing quite a bit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, NIMO expects to hand over command of the fire to local officials, she said.<\/p>\n

Local officials are also managing the flood risk and they expect to present results of a study<\/a> that examined which areas in the burn scar face the highest risk during a public meeting at 7 p.m. Saturday at Miller Middle School, 2608 Junction St.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scattered storms could bring an inch of rain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[2838,5427,13,414],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-98890","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-weather"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98890","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=98890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98890"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=98890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}