[Editor's Note: This is part 3 of a multi-series of articles covering the work session of May 14, 2019. This one covers the presentation by the Forest Service on the fire season outlook.]

By A.J. Ward and Mary Alice Murphy

The second presentation of the Grant County Commission work session on May 14, 2019, was given by Gabriel Holguin, fire and aviation staff officer for the Gila National Forest.

"Thanks for allowing me this opportunity to come and visit with you about the upcoming fire season, Holguin said. "I Just want to give you our predictions from the Forest Service standpoint and also share with you what we have planned for this fire season as far as our resources, what pre-planning we have done and have prepared for this fire season.

"First off, I want to say thanks for the cooperation we had early on this year," Holguin continued. "About a month ago we had a pre-season fire meeting, a cooperating meeting just to get together and talk about any updates that any agency in particular might have in regards to what they can provide in the event we have a wildland fire that affects multiple jurisdictions, not just the county but the city, the state, whatever the case might be. We had a great turnout with folks from your general services department, county manager's office, sheriff's department, as well as the planning department. We had a great conversation, and I feel we all walked away from that meeting all on the same page in regards to how we would cooperate in the event we had another Quail Ridge-type fire."

He said he wanted to talk about trends they look at, how they determine where the county is in fire season. The energy release component is a measure of the heat that's produced at the flaming front of the wildfire per unit area. "So, it is just how much potential heat is there related to the fuels that the fires are burning. It is not important that you fully understand that, but it is important for you to know that is the trend that we used to determine where we are at."

Holguin showed a couple of graphs and the current ERCs and what the average trend is. The ERC chart showed a red line as the maximum; the grey line as average; and "the blue line is where we currently are this fire season. You can see we are a long way from our maximum right now. You can also see we hit a dip very recently with the moisture we received. In some areas of the forest we received up to about 2 inches of rain, not even close to the average at this point. By all predictions we are looking at a very average fire season this year. And we are off to a slow start. I remember when the Signal Fire started in 2014, on Signal Peak on Mother's Day. We are a long way from that, for sure."

He showed a picture of what the Forest Service calls pocket cards that they provide to firefighters. "Many of our firefighters come in from other regions, so this gives them an idea of where we are and significant events that are taking place on the Gila National Forest. On the bottom graph, you will remember 2006 and 2012. 2012 was the Whitewater Baldy Fire and you can see that from that little dot, we were above the average ERC and we were approaching the 90th percentile for dryness. Conditions were significantly different from what they are now. Field conditions are very moist and very wet at the current moment."

"I wanted to share with you a product our predictive services group provides us in regard to potential fire season for the entire region," Holguin said. "Our region includes New Mexico, Arizona, and part of West Texas. I want to show you some or all of the factors they consider when they are trying to predict fire seasons. And they are drought, fine fuel conditions, which are the grasses, the wildflowers, those real thin 1-hour fuels. Typically, when they are cured out, they take one hour to dry out to a condition where they are available to burn. Then we look at seasonal temperature and precipitation, which is the season set up, so what we are talking about there is what kind of weather we had late winter and early spring. Then we look at spring and early summer weather patterns, what is predicted, what we are looking at as we move into fire season. And then finally we consider the monsoon."

He jumped to the end where it summarizes each of those components and "we will talk about that. So, drought – there is potential that the Four Corners area will be into a severe drought condition as we move into the summer months and that could creep down onto the northern portion of Gila National Forest, mainly into Catron County. But for Grant County, we don't anticipate that we will move into a drought scenario this summer or anytime soon. Fine fuel conditions are driven mainly by the monsoons, and we had a very robust monsoon late fall, late summer, and also we had a decent winter precipitation. If you notice outside, you probably see we are getting a little bit of green-up and that doesn't always happen. But there is an abundance of fine fuels and fine fuels are what typically carry our wildfires. So, we lean towards an average fire season. We do have an abundance of fine fuels, and we do have those carrier fuels."

"We look at the seasonal temperature and the precipitation, and we had more moisture and cooler conditions over the past 3 to 5 months, based on the El Nino pattern we have been in since late fall. "El Niño and La Niña they describe basically as sea temperature at the equator, and that drives our weather patterns. When we are in El Niño we are warmer with moisture. When we are in La Niña, we are colder and drier. We are definitely in El Niño and the prediction is that El Niño is going to continue on into early summer. So, for the next month at least we are going to be in the El Niño pattern, which brings above average moisture. That is all relative. Above average this time of year is not a lot. We are seeing an increase in moisture, obviously, especially with the round of thunderstorms we had. We got around 2 inches, which is above average precipitation. For spring and summer weather patterns, we should expect an average pattern as we move toward the end of May and into June. We are going to continue to have these systems, these backdoor cold fronts that move through, and typically they just bring wind. But with El Niño in place, they seem to be bringing more moisture and less wind. As far as the monsoon goes, it is pretty regular, pretty constant, the robustness of the monsoon varies, but it is pretty typical we get our monsoon season beginning on the 4th of July. I don't anticipate more moisture until then."

He showed a graphical version of the potential for the fire season for May, June, July and August. Red indicates an above average fire season. Green indicates a below average fire season. White indicates an average fire season. "All four months indicate an average fire season. It is within reason that southern Arizona has a potential to have above-average fire season, as well as the west coast and all the way up into Washington and Oregon."

Bringing it back to what is going on in the Gila, as far as fires go, "we have had eight wildfires this season totaling about 24 acres. That has been a better season so far. I think it will be an average fire season. We obviously will get fires. We will start trending into the monsoon season where we start picking up more thunderstorms in June and we start getting more lightning. And we will eventually dry out a little bit. So, I anticipate we will have an average season with a few starts. One thing with this type of weather pattern and this season is that we love to take advantage of fires. Fire is a natural part of our eco-system. The Southwest adapted and grew with fire. We need fire to help manage our forest. It helps with recycling of nutrients and improved forage for all the wildlife out there. It is a part of our eco-system and we need it."

"We are looking to manage fires this season," Holguin continued. "We hope to manage all fires, wanted or unwanted. Of course, we do a lot of planning to get us to a point where we are comfortable with accepting the risk of managing wildfire, accepting that it could potentially be a fire that is with us for three weeks, a month or longer. We look at all those values and assets that we have out on the landscape: our threatened and endangered species, power lines, highways, infrastructures, our cooperators' infrastructures, road corridors and the impact that wildfire would have on them. We take all of that into consideration before we actually make the decision to allow the wildfire to do its thing on the landscape."

He said the forest has a "pretty hefty target for prescribed fire this year assigned to us by our regional office. We are looking at trying to burn 30,000 acres this year. And that is across the entire 3.3 million acres, not just Grant County. So, we do have several large burns planned. Two are in Grant County. Cameron Creek is next to Fort Bayard and it will be about 900 acres. We are waiting for the window, the right prescription to go ahead and start burning that unit. We were going to try last week but of course, we got moisture and high humidity, so we weren't able to get that done. We figure about 10 to 14 days to get that one done. We are looking at another one in Mimbres, the LbarT prescribed fire, about 3,000 acres. That is the same deal. We are waiting for the window and the right prescription. That will be about the same timeframe about a week and a half out before we can get to work on that one."

As far as our resources go, the mix of engines and hand crews that the Gila National Forest typically gets out on the forest for fire seasons to respond to the fires, "we have the same contingent of local resources. We have nine engines scattered across the forest. We have four 120-person hand crews. We have two hot shot crews. We have our tanker base. We have our helicopter program, which includes a couple of helicopters. Typically, this time of year, we bring in smoke jumpers from Missoula, Montana; from Idaho; from Washington, and it is a kind of a mix from all the smoke jumper bases in the Northwest. We have eight of them down here and they are basically here to help us with our prescribed fire needs. Our normal contingent of jumpers is 20. We bring 20 down and have one aircraft. The great thing about the jumpers is there are roughly 300 of them in the Northwest. Our fire season is the first to start and take off and we have access to most of the resources up north and can get them down here within six to eight hours. We have agreements to bring more jumpers down and more aircraft as necessary. That is always in our hip pocket as a resource."

He presented a couple of other highlights of the forest's resources. "we typically recruit and hire 60 to 80 'call when needed' firefighters as part of our Southwest Firefighters Crew program. We have already done all that recruiting. We have completed training and the pack test. Those are all local folks from within the county and a few from Lordsburg, plus T or C and Reserve. We get a handful from those places but mostly from Grant County. We try to help our local economy and have a strong militia of folks that we can call upon in a short amount of time. The call back on those resources is typically about two hours. So, it is pretty quick."

The other thing that the Gila has been doing over the past several years is the camp crew program. "It is really pretty cool and I'm really pretty excited about it. We recruit from the local high schools, typically juniors and seniors. We provide them the same training that we provide to a first-year firefighter. But we don't put them out on the fire line. We use them as camp support. Those kids make up 10-person crews. Any time we get a large incident that requires a base camp for all the firefighters, where they eat and sleep and we provide basic services to them. Those camp crew kids are out there just making sure the firefighters have what they need as far as supplies and meals and sleeping arrangements. It is a good program. This year we saw a real spike in that program because word is getting around. We have kids from Silver, Cobre, Aldo, Lordsburg, T or C, Reserve. I think we recruited about 70 kids. We will have them all trained up the first week of June and ready to respond by the second week. We have sent crews out of the area to Arizona and California."

He said one thing he failed to mention is that the crew bosses for those kids are teachers or former camp crew members. "We don't allow anyone else to be the crew bosses. We figure the teachers are used to dealing with kids and their personalities. Coaches as well are a part of that. We only use people who are familiar with dealing with kids."

No one had questions, but General Services Director Randy Villa noted that all resources are purchasing fuel from Grant County at the fuel farm at the airport.

The next article will cover the monthly presentation from Gila Regional Medical Center.