By Mary Alice Murphy
[Editor's Note: This second and final article will cover the questions from the public with answers from officials and the fire team. Please be aware that the answers were from Friday, June 20, and conditions may have changed since then.]
The June 20, 2025, public meeting, continued with questions from residents and answers from officials and fire team members addressing the concerns
Facilitator Starr Farrell gave similar instructions to those wishing to ask questions to be sure to wait, like last time, until they had a microphone in their hand before they spoke.
She said she had some questions that had come in online that they were wanting to have asked.
Q: Has the Trout Fire traveled over Signal Peak? Is it close to Twin Sisters?
A: Currently it has not gone over Signal Peak, but as you guys could see up there with fire behavior, today, we're diligently working to try to limit the the impact at the communication towers up there. I'm not 100% sure about Twin Sisters, so I apologize, I'll be around in this area.
Q: Some flagging has been marking driveways. What's being marked?
A: So that has been marked when the state police have gone around putting the evacuation notices. If there is some type of other flagging out there it could be where firefighters have marked access. So you know, they need to gain access to the property. Especially with limited smoke visibility and things like that, we do need to go out and do structural protection.
Q: I was a firefighter. I was a district FMO (fire management officer) and I was also deputy forester. I want to thank the team for doing that job. But I also have some concerns on their fires and pushing their tactics. And I'm not going to say where, but I can talk to you later and then tell you what concerns I have. One other thing on the evacuation. They went over and told me that I needed to evacuate. The fire wasn't even at Bear Canyon yet, and that's the way the evacuation notices went out to people, so that they seem to think that the fire was next door. In the future, maybe evacuation notice can be a little bit different. Maybe if they have some respiratory or something, but what was done was not the way. Oh and one more thing. I just want to say that I feel sorry for the district ranger, for the supervisor, the people that live and work here, for the Forest Service, because they're the ones that do have to answer the questions to the public after the team has left.
A: Let's answer that question about evacuations for you. So how are the evacuation notices sent out, and why are they sent out into a broad spectrum? Law enforcement, everyone that you've heard speak collectively, looks at all of the conditions and determines when is the most appropriate time to send out those notices to tell you if you're in a Ready or you're a Set, or you're a Go. So there's a lot of different conditions that come into that. Ready, Set, Go is a very proven system to try to evaluate or evacuate people in an orderly and timely fashion, and I will tell you that the county and law enforcement has a great team advising us as to when to make those evacuations, and I think they've done a darn good job of helping us do this properly.
Announcement: I'm the manager of Silver City radio with four stations here, 950, 96.5 92.9, and 102.9, and I've been working around the clock to help bring announcements out. We have relayed over 100 announcements over the last week . Thank you very much for keeping us in the loop locally and as immediately as we can put it together. I want to shout out to many other people that are here. Councilor and Mayor Pro Tem Lupe, who has come in. We have many others here: Sen.Ramos; Sen. Brantley, Rep.Terrazas, Commissioner Ponce, many people have come into the station to keep you informed. So please tune into us. We're doing everything we can to get that information out and present your information out there. You all are doing an outstanding job.
Announcement: I'm Patricia, and I just want to make an announcement that on Sunday at Harvest Church, on Hudson Street, HOPE is coming with a huge semi. So anyone who needs supplies, it can be the firefighters. It can be people who are displaced. Go there at three o'clock in the afternoon and pick up what you need.
Q: The one thing you mentioned was a lot of these announcements have been on Facebook. A lot of us don't have Facebook so it's difficult to get that information. I do have Watch Duty, which is a great app, and I haven't heard anything
on that, and so I would highly suggest people get Watch Duty on their phones. The other thing I need to ask is about the return home. A lot of us evacuated San Lorenzo. We never lost power, apparently. And a lot of us would like to go home, and a lot of us
left before the cops came, thankfully, to evacuate everybody out. So how do we know, except hopefully an announcement coming through on the emergency system? Big kudos to everybody and the firefighters. We're extremely grateful for everything. So thank you.
Applause.
A: I will speak on Watch Duty a little bit. Watch Duty is not an official government site. It does do a great job. They work with us, and we try to make sure that the information that they're sharing we have an opportunity to look at also but your best bets are inciweb, which does not require anything to go into, as well as the Gila National Forest Facebook page, and Grant County website also has those alerts, and so does New Mexico Fire. It's also posted on there daily all of the information. So there are other areas that are official locations in which to get your information.
Q: My question is a gratitude. I want to thank Elizabeth and her team, because last February, I went to the Wilderness Ranger Station and requested some assistance along my property, I'm out there right past Camp Thunderbird, where all the flags are. Anyway, they came in April, and they cut all around, back about 200 yards, back to where the fire break that they did this past Saturday and Sunday. And then they came back in August and burnt the piles. If they hadn't done that, all that vegetation would have been right up to my property. And then the fire break that they did, they worked very hard Saturday and Sunday, all this Sunday, and that is just amazing. That didn't save just my property, I'm on it in a corner there. That saved a lot of properties, so thank you.
Q: I was at work on Tuesday, I got no notification, but my husband and my grandson were thankfully getting it there.
When I was under evacuation, the police officer came to my house, they didn't ask me for any information.They don't have my phone number. So how are they going to notify me?
A: Thank you for the question. When these evacuations were announced to law enforcement, all law enforcement were directed to ask the residents for their contact information in case something happened. I don't know which law enforcement agency went to your location, but that was what we were asking the officers to do to get that information in case they needed to notify you. But we do have other options on other ways of notifying residents. We're giving the assessor's office the address, and we're able to locate who the owner and contact information is, and that's how we're going to be notifying people that we don't have your contact information. I apologize if that didn't get asked of you. I apologize that that didn't happen with you, but that was what we're supposed to be doing, and that's the way it's going to continue to happen. We will make sure that they are doing that. But like I say, we have other options, other avenues, of getting your contact information that hopefully we will have if we need to contact you.
Farrell said they had time for one more question before the folks are going to come up here. And then you can ask your individual questions, because it does look like we have a lot of individual questions.
Q: I know this is unknown, but for those of us who are evacuated, can you give us something other than soon? Can you say, is it days, weeks, months? How long can we just have something like put in mind so we can plan a time frame of how long will we be evacuated? I kI know it's unknown, but you know what I mean, like days to months?
A: I can kind of address that a little bit. We are working diligently. We're working hard every day. We're evaluating the risk to residents, the risk that the fire behavior may continue to impact every day. We're lowering that. And, you know, when I say soon, I can't put a timeline on that. We talked about potential monsoons coming in. There's still heat on the fire right now, and outflow winds coming, something can pick up. And the last thing that we want to do is repopulate an area and have to turn around and have to re-evacuate it, so as we remove the risk and can evaluate not only the risk of a fire, but we plug in and make sure there's no overhead hazards with trees and things like that, we'll continue to communicate, and put out updates, and we'll get you guys back in your area as soon as possible.
Farrell concluded by thanking everyone for their time. "And as I said, the speakers are going to be available, and so this is a great time for you to get those individual questions answered."
[Editor's Note: Daily updates are posted late morning or early afternoon, when the Beat receives them and can get them posted. Thanks for being a Beat Reader!]
