Hello everyone,
The Peggy fire is currently estimated at 462 acres.
All spot fires over the last few days have held and cooled down. No new spot fires were found. Yesterday was sunny with little cloud cover. In the morning we found opportunities to continue burning on the south flank and build depth in the interior. It was about early afternoon that fire behavior started to pick up and ignitions slowly ceased and eventually stopped at the height of yesterday’s burn period. In the mid/late afternoon conditions became again favorable to continue with firing. At this time opportunities were found to continue firing on the North Flank, interior and South Flank. This firing continued until the burn window closed. Overall the fire’s black edge has been squared up progressing relatively even down the hill towards FR 376. and we are starting to transition to more pine/pj and straight p/j. There is a lot of old fuel wood slash and bug kill in the p/j with little surface fuel. It is taking fire but we have to walk the ground extensively to light jackpots of fuels. With the effects we are getting, it is definitely worth the work. We originally thought we would stop at the p/j transition but are now thinking to continue all the way down towards FR 376 to get some fire in the p/j and meet some resource objectives.
A few days ago I found an old field house (photo attached) in the middle of the planning area that was not on the cultural site map. I removed the dead fuels and this area was fired yesterday. We fired around the site and will check today to see if fire stayed out, mostly sparse p/j so we should be good. This has been done on a couple of sties. We have been busy the last few days keeping up with this fire but everyone has vested interest in mitigating these sites when we come across them and have time.
The hard push on Saturday created about a 30 acre patch of high severity. Other than that we have a nice mixed mosaic of fire effects and are creating an ideal amount of heterogeneity within the planning area. Andre, I think you will be pleased.
We have an outstanding team of folks out here that are making this happen. Santa Fe County Black Canyon hand crew is doing an outstanding job. Espanola is doing an outstanding job. Jemez and the Jemez Eagles are doing an outstanding job. And the Abajo WFM has only been on for one day but have blended in very well. These folks deserve a lot of credit for getting a tough job done in rough topography and in a gnarly fuel model.
Thanks for all of the support.
Dennis Carril
Fire Ecology/Fuels
Forest Service
Santa Fe National Forest
p: 505-438-5345
c: 618-920-6221
dcarril@fs.fed.us
11 Forest Lane
Santa Fe, NM 87508
www.fs.fed.us