But as the April winds howled into the mountains of fragile-arid northern New Mexico, driving the fire to its limits and soon on the path to another unpredictable burn out of control, it became one of the U.S. Forest Service’s most devastating mistakes. in decades. The resulting merger of these two burns, called the Calf Canyon / Hermit’s Peak flame, is now classified as the largest fire in New Mexico history. Still burning in an area of more than 341,000 acres – larger than the city of Los Angeles – the fire has destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands in an area where Spanish-speaking villagers settled centuries ago. The painful losses provoked reactions against the Forest Service and provided a critical test of how the authorities react when a prescribed burn goes too far. “I hope those responsible for this catastrophic failure do not sleep at night,” said Meg Sandoval, 65, whose family settled in the area in the 1840s. Monte was destroyed by fire. “They have ruined the lives of thousands of people,” he said. With patience in New Mexico being impossible, the stakes are huge. Drought and climate change have turned the Western United States into a box, resulting in more devastating wildfires of all kinds. Based on ancient fire management practices, federal and state officials are installing prescription burns in forests where natural fires have been suppressed for decades, trying to dilute an accumulation of vegetation that can fuel catastrophic fires. The Forest Service, which already conducts about 4,500 projected fires each year, wants to aggressively boost operations nationwide. President Biden’s infrastructure package provides $ 5 billion for firefighting measures, including removing flammable flora and raising firefighters’ salaries. But as forest managers lose control of some of the fires they have set, the public reaction is growing. On May 20, after the fire broke out in New Mexico, Randy Moore, head of the US Forest Service, announced a 90-day ceasefire in the National Forest, giving officials time to study the program and how its execution. . In an internal review of the burn on April 6, Forest Service investigators found that fire managers had followed a plan within the approved limits. But a later analysis of the weather and vegetation showed that “the projected fire was burning under much drier conditions than they realized.” The review, which is expected to be released this week, described a chaotic sequence of events in which nearby automated meteorological stations were offline. and The relative humidity fell “far below” the expected range. The investigation also found that firefighters “did not stop igniting or extinguish the fire following clear indications of high intensity fire” and that some used a radio frequency that made them inaccessible in many cases. Firefighters also saw pressure to “fulfill the mission,” which may have led to greater risks, according to the review. Despite these problems, Mr Moore defended the mission in an interview, describing the planned burns as vital to reducing the threat of extreme forest fires. In 99.84 percent of cases, he said, the burns are going as planned. “But this 0.16 percent that is missing, we are experiencing it now,” Moore acknowledged. “Whenever there is a lack of trust, it takes time to rebuild it. Words do not build that trust. “Actions build that trust.” During a brief visit to New Mexico this month, President Biden sought to alleviate some of the concerns. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency would cover 100 percent of the cost of temporary housing and cleaning costs in the first 90 days after the fire damage, up from the standard 75 percent. FEMA has distributed about $ 3.4 million to about 1,000 families, the agency said. Mr Biden also voiced support for a bill to set up a fund to cover fire damage, money that is considered vital in a place where much of the damaged property was uninsured. He warned, however, that such a move would likely require Republican help in the Senate. The office of the minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, did not respond to a request for comment. Representative Teresa Leger Fernández, a Democrat representing the fire-stricken area of northern New Mexico in Congress, said she welcomed the government’s move to increase federal aid and take steps to mitigate potential floods in critical national forests. southwest The monsoon season begins, bringing the risk of floods and landslides in the fire-stricken landscape. But like many of her constituents, Ms. Leger Fernández said she was outraged when she learned that the Forest Service had started both fires. “How could you make the same mistake twice in the same neighborhood?” asked. Tanya Kwan Simmons, whose home in the village of Cleveland was destroyed, said the insurance was expected to cover a small portion of her family’s losses, related to mortgage payments and other liabilities. “The bank will take the money and then we will be left with a piece of junk,” said Kwan Simmons, 53. Her insurance company said she and her husband had to rebuild on the same plot, she said, “which is a joke based on disaster and the real threat of flooding.” Together with other New Mexico lawmakers in Congress, Ms Leger Fernández has proposed legislation to more fully compensate fire victims. However, she said that her bill is unlikely to go ahead on its own in both houses, although it could possibly be included in other legislation. Uncertainty contrasts with reaction to a 2000 fire that broke out of the National Park Service and destroyed hundreds of homes in Los Alamos, NM FEMA quickly gave cash to victims in addition to regular emergency aid and Democrats and Republicans in New York Mexico’s congressional delegation quickly won bipartisan support for a law allowing for extensive compensation for fire victims. Los Alamos, one of the richest cities in the West, has a large number of PhD residents working in the country’s nuclear arsenal and earning high salaries from the national laboratory there. Some of the communities devastated by this year’s fire are among the poorest in New Mexico. Antonia Roybal-Mack, a lawyer in Albuquerque, was an aide to Pete Domenici, a Republican senator known for his bipartisanship during the Los Alamos fire. He said the current polarization policy could prevent the passage of similar aid from the Senate, which is evenly distributed between Democrats and Republicans. Mrs. Roybal-Mack grew up in the area burned by this year’s fire. She said her family could have sold her father’s 360-acre ranch for millions of dollars before the planned burns got out of hand. “Now, it’s not worth anything,” he said. Seeing the difficulty that many people in New Mexico may have in obtaining compensation, Ms. Roybal-Mack lays the groundwork for a massive tort case against the Forest Service. Mr Moore, the head of the forest service, declined to provide specific information on what his service, part of the Ministry of Agriculture, could do to compensate the victims. The USDA, he said, was working as a “unit” to see how it could provide assistance. The 90-day moratorium on prescription burns ordered by Mr. Moore, along with the scrutiny of such operations, worries some fire experts that they will be pushed aside – something that could end up causing even more colossal flames in overgrown vegetation. “We should not necessarily consider one that escaped, even though it was catastrophic and huge, as a reason to end all prescription burns,” said Rebecca Miller, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California at the West on Fire Project. But even some who advocate deforestation blame the Forest Service’s long-standing policies for this latest tragedy. Patrick Diren wrote a book about the Pecos River, the sources of which are threatened by the Calf Canyon / Hermit’s Peak fire. He noted that in the 1890s, the forest around the river that is now designated as a national forest consisted mainly of “old burns”, as well as meadows, open parks and barren peaks. An inventory in 1911 showed that a typical acre of ponderosa pine habitat had 50 to 60 trees. By the end of the 20th century, Mr. Dearen said, after a long national policy of suppressing natural fires, they had been shot at 1,089 trees per acre. “Nature did a good job, but no one recognized it,” Dearen said. However, if the government is to take on the role of nature in thinning forests, it must respond to its mistakes, he said. “If a person comes out and lights a fire on purpose and escapes, he will probably go to jail,” he said. “The federal government must take responsibility for the people.”
