Opinion: This year's wildfire season could be history maker

When it comes to this year’s wildfire season, we’re witnessing history-making catastrophes and, if you look a little closer, catastrophes averted.

The history-makers are monsters like the combined Hermit’s Peak and Calf Canyon fire in San Miguel and Mora counties. This week, it officially became the largest wildfire in recorded state history – more than 298,000 acres --surpassing the 2012 Baldy-Whitewater fire in the Gila Wilderness in 2012. Combined with the Cerro Pelado Fire in Sandoval County, the Cooks Peak Fire in Mora and Colfax, and dozens of smaller fires scattered around the state, New Mexico is far and above the hottest of the Southwest’s hotspots right now — and will continue to be in the weeks ahead.

Incredibly, only two people have died in New Mexico’s fires so far — late last month, a couple died in Lincoln County’s McBride Fire, where more than 6,000 acres and 200-plus structures were burned.

More incredibly, no one has died in the Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon Fire. Thousands of people have had to evacuate, hundreds of homes have been burned, and untold damage has been done to Las Vegas’ water supply. The city gets most of its water from the Gallinas River, with its headwaters at the base of Hermit’s Peak. Ash and erosion (with the coming of the monsoons) will soon contaminate this waterway and threaten the city’s reservoirs, and the city will face a whole new crisis.

I shudder to think of the damage this fire will level on Las Vegas, population 14,000, with its three colleges, two school districts and an Old Town and New Town that are as rich in Wild West history and Hispanic culture as you’ll find anywhere. In the days and weeks ahead, we’ll get a clearer picture of the damage to this region’s land, water and people. It’ll be heartbreaking.

Most if not all our state’s wildfires so far this fire season are man-made. Hermit’s Peak started from a prescribed burn in a Santa Fe National Forest; the fact that a federal agency started this fire should justify an influx of millions if not billions of dollars in federal money for rebuilding and restoration once the fire is finally contained.

It will probably take weeks to fully contain the Hermit’s Peak fire, which started April 6. Then it’ll take years to recover from it. Some people and places may never recover

Then there are the near catastrophes, the ones our firefighters have stopped before they got out completely out of hand. I witnessed one here in Santa Rosa on May 9, when what was probably a cigarette tossed by a passing motorist started a fire on the shoulder of Interstate 40 inside the city limits. It quickly erupted and threatened homes on the north side of town. But it didn’t burn a single structure, partly because of which way the wind was blowing and mostly because a bunch of firefighters jumped in to save the day.

Santa Rosa’s fire chief, Justin Rodgers, said it takes “a lot of courage to stay in the fight when you have a wall of fire rolling at you. (We) dug our heels in and held the line, said a prayer and fought like hell to knock it down.”

The fire burned “only” about 100 acres, so it barely made news elsewhere. And yet local and area firefighters, some from as far as 30 miles away, along with some professional hotshot firefighters who rushed to the scene to help, saved the town.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

[email protected]