Above: 3-D map of the Ute Park Fire, looking west. The red line on the map shows the perimeter at 10:30 p.m. June 2, 2018.
Increased fire activity near the community of Ute Park prompted the Colfax Emergency Manager and Colfax Sheriff’s Office to issue a mandatory evacuation for the community Saturday afternoon. Winds from the southeast caused the fire to grow to the northwest south of the town. Overnight it kept spreading to the west and a satellite overflight at 1:40 a.m. detected heat on the north side of Highway 64 west of the community. Firefighters are conducting point protection around structures and planned a burnout operation Saturday night to help protect the community which is now encircled by a dozer line.
Saturday’s burning operations to help protect the Cimarron area were successful on the fire’s eastern and southern flanks.
The fire has burned 31,910 acres in northeast New Mexico between Eagles Nest and Cimarron 26 air miles northeast of Taos.
The red line on the map shows the perimeter of the Ute Park Fire at 10:30 p.m. MDT June 2, 2018. The yellow line was the perimeter the previous night. The red dots on the northwest side indicate heat detected by a satellite at 1:40 a.m. MDT June 3.
Yesterday the National Interagency Fire Center released their monthly wildfire potential outlook for the next four months. They predicted that in July the areas with the highest potential will move from the Southwest to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Western Montana, California, and northern Nevada.
These charts show the National Weather Service’s outlook for precipitation and temperature for June through August, 2018.
Above: The truck that became stuck as the driver attempted to turn it around. The report describes it as “fire damaged”. Photo from the report.
The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have released more details about the near miss that occurred on the Horse Park Fire May 27 in a remote area of Southwest Colorado. The report disclosed that in addition to the two firefighters that had to flee from a stuck truck, a lookout in another location also fled on foot and ignited an escape fire at a potential fire shelter deployment site as the fire approached. According to the information released there were no injuries.
Below is the narrative from the “72 Hour Preliminary Report”:
“Two crew members were scouting a road for a potential burnout operation when their truck became stuck. They were unable to free the truck before the fire began to overtake them. The crewmembers made the decision to abandon the truck and take their gear with them. They fled back down the road and away from the fire. One crew member ran ahead and made it safely back to the other vehicles. The other crew member dropped his pack, keeping his fire shelter and radio with him. An additional crew member came up the road on a UTV to help him escape. The pair drove to the parking area where the other crew members were waiting in the vehicles.
“Meanwhile, the crew lookout was forced to flee from the lookout position by the same advance of the fire. Given the fire behavior, the lookout did not feel it was possible to outpace the fire and make it back to the vehicles, so instead moved down and away from the fire. The lookout dropped their pack, but kept the fire shelter, a tool, and radio. At some point during the escape, the lookout realized that the antennae was no longer attached to the radio and there was no way to communicate with the crew or other resources. After moving a considerable distance down a drainage, the lookout found a grassy spot that appeared suitable to deploy a shelter, and began lighting the fuels in the area. Before deployment was necessary, aerial resources located the lookout, who was picked up and flown back to the parking area to rejoin the crew.
“There were no injuries as a result of this incident. An Interagency FLA team, is in place and reviewing the incident.”
A firefighter’s burned pack. Photo from the report.
Videos recorded during the incident show firefighters hurriedly moving to safety while a radio conversation can be heard referring to the firefighters who escaped and the vehicle that was damaged.
The Ute Park Fire in Northeast New Mexico expanded to over 27,000 acres on Friday according to a mapping flight at 11 p.m. Friday night. It had the potential to become much larger but it may have been slowed when it spread into the scar from the 2002 Ponil Complex of Fires. In addition, the wind speed recorded at Cimarron on Friday, 9 mph gusting at 22 to 28 out of the southwest, was less than the prediction of sustained 25 mph southwest winds gusting between 31 and 36.
Map of the Ute Park Fire at 11 p.m. MDT June 1, 2018.
After sundown Friday the wind decreased to 3 mph with a variable direction, which allowed the fire to spread on the southwest side, probably adding one or two thousand acres to the 27,000 mapped at 11 p.m. But firefighters were able to keep the fire out of Cimarron.
#UteParkFire in relation to the 2002 Ponil Complex that burned ~91,400 acres in early June that year, including a significant portion (~28,000 acres) of Philmont’s North Country. #NMFirepic.twitter.com/VEilwjec6W
Saturday’s weather forecast for Cimarron is for 84 degrees, relative humidity in the mid-teens, and 12 mph winds out of the northeast in the morning switching to the southeast in the afternoon. The variable wind direction could be problematic for firefighters.
The sensors on satellites that detect fires can be extremely useful, showing us the general location and extent of wildfires.
But as proven again today, they are not perfect. As imported into Google Earth, a VIIRS I 375 meter S-NPP sensor on one of the satellites reported at 1:47 p.m. MDT on Friday that there was a fire 142 miles long stretching across half the width of New Mexico. I feel confident in saying this is incorrect.
Apparently these people survived driving through the Ute Park Fire in Northeast New Mexico. As a wildland firefighter for decades, I have never driven through that much fire for that length of time. One of the many disastrous things that can happen is that the fire consumes so much oxygen that there is not enough left to support burning the gasoline in the vehicle’s engine — it can quit and the vehicle will stall, probably in the most intense part of the fire.
