On a chilly November morning, about two dozen people in flame-resistant clothes gather at the US Forest Service's El Rito ranger station about 90 minutes north of Santa Fe.
Stamping their feet and nursing steaming coffees, the team gets a briefing on today's plan to conduct a prescribed burn on the mountainous terrain of the Carson National Forest.
A weather report crackles over the radio. It's dry, and the crucial wind forecast is set to be breezy enough to move the fire along, but not so windy the fire could escape.
"The intent of what we're doing here today is we're returning fire to the landscape. And the purpose is we want to help create a more fire resilient community," burn boss George Allalunis said, of the proposed burning of about seven square miles.
This year set a record for burning forests on purpose. The U.S. Forest Service set fire to just under 2 million acres in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, in planned or prescribed burns like this one.
All over the U.S., especially in the West, climate change has made fire seasons longer and forests more vulnerable to fire. Drought and heat mean more pests and dead vegetation. And, for more than a century, government policy suppressed fire in places where it happens naturally or where Native communities historically used fire to manage forests. So, forests are overgrown.
A recent Congressional report called the resulting wildfire crisis urgent, severe and far-reaching, likely costing tens to hundreds of billions every year.
That report and a sheaf of similar ones insist more prescribed fire is needed to reduce flammable vegetation and protect communities from big wildfires. People from this team have been doing a lot of them.
"I know a lot of us are a little tired," said District Ranger Angie Krall.
Nationwide, more people are living close to wild lands, and here in New Mexico, there are communities that have been in close relationship with the forest for centuries, as Krall reminded the team.
"People make a living off of this forest," she said. "Grazing cattle, getting their elk right now and bringing wood down to be warm for the winter."
The team heads up a forest road to conduct a test burn. Wearing helmets and carrying drip torches, a group starts at the top of a hill and zigzags down, dropping fire as they go. Foot-high flames leap up and crackle in a thick carpet of pine needles.
"We want to see that it's consuming well, but not too intense," said public information officer Aaron Livingston.
Diplomacy
Meantime Krall heads off to a string of small communities in the nearby Vallecitos river valley. She is on more of a “hearts and minds” mission.
"On burns like this, it's really important for the agency administrator or the ranger to do a lot of community outreach well in advance," she says.
That means press releases, speaking to community leaders, making phone calls and house calls, putting up flyers, sometimes community meetings. Today she will stop by a community library and lend an air filter to someone with asthma.
And a lot of the time, she's trying to justify burns like today's to people who aren't easy to convince.
"They don't like it," she said. “They don't want it, they don't want to see the smoke. They don't want to see any fire on the landscape."
She tries to be humble.
"We never want to say: we know what's best, we're the government. That goes over like a lead balloon."
Of course, here in New Mexico, there is at least one good reason for that.
It was only about fifty miles away from Vallecitos that two prescribed burns got out of control last year and became the biggest wildfire the state's ever seen. The Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon fire burned hundreds of homes.
Resident Timoteo Chacón summed up a lot of people's feelings.
"The last time that it got away here, obviously, they knew that was a time for a windy time. And they went ahead and did it," he said.
An agency report found one of the prescribed burns went ahead despite the fact a nearby weather station was down, so crews did not have details on local weather.
The report's analysis also found that while wind and humidity did not add up to extreme fire danger over the entire controlled burn zone, they could have over part of the area. And it concluded that if burn bosses had factored in local expertise, they would have known that winds can change direction quickly in that terrain.
"Once you get kicked, I don't think it's very easy to forget," said Chacón. "And same thing with fires. Once you get punished, or you see what you've seen all your life get burned, you lose trust in the people that say they're going to help you."
The fire raged for months. President Biden flew to New Mexico to take the blame and promise compensation.
"I think we have a responsibility as a government to deal with the communities that are put in such jeopardy," he said during a public address.
In September, 2022, the Hermit's Peak Fire Assistance Act was passed, ultimately putting taxpayers on the hook for nearly $4 billion in compensation, although the money has been slow to reach the people who need it. So as smoke gathers in this valley, people get nervous.
"People right now, I think all over New Mexico, are very, very aware of what happened," said Marlene Fahey, who lives in Vallecitos. "I guess there's this sense that they're dangerous."
Policy shifts
After last year's disaster, the Forest Service paused burning nationwide for 90 days, and then issued a new set of guidelines for prescribed fire. On the ground, that includes higher-level officials being present throughout the burn and more contingency planning. Today, there is a bulldozer pre-positioned in case the fire escapes and fire lines need to be dug, and a fire truck known as Big Red cruising around in case of emergency. After burns, there is more monitoring.
The guidelines also emphasize the importance of building public support for prescribed fire, and in New Mexico there have been several community meetings ahead of this year's burns. But the agency seems unlikely to stop burning because of public opinion.
Under a wildfire crisis strategy, the Forest Service wants to treat up to 50 million more acres over the next decade or so with thinning and burning, in addition to what it already does every year. Studies by forest ecologists indicate that would begin to address the backlog in land that would have burned naturally over the many decades that fire has been suppressed.
Today, the fire is going to plan. A helicopter drops incendiary balls into the center, while monitors watch the edges blacken and cool. And Krall keeps making her rounds.
"We had a bad thing happen last year on Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon," she said. "We're very humbled by that, and we have a long row to hoe to build back that trust."
A National Climate Assessment published this month estimated Western wildfire will get more severe until at least the middle of the century. Forest managers never promise that prescribed fire is without risk but Krall says one way or another, people are going to have to learn to live with more fire.
