Surveying a sprawling map of the northern San Juans on Wednesday, Mike Smith was deep in a geometry of fire.
Fingers tracing fire lines and ridges, Smith – who assumed the role of incident commander over Gold Mountain Fire operations on July 14 – said firefighters are working to draw a “big box” around the blaze as it approaches three weeks of burning.
That box – a network of cleared lines, controlled burns, and natural buffers – is an immense lasso carved around the Cimarrons, gradually tightening to prevent the fire’s further spread.
“We’re hoping to be able to shrink it in a couple places. And there’s some other places that we’re probably going to have to put some fire on the ground because that’s the only choice,” he told the Plaindealer.
Smith and his crew, Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 2, formally assumed command of the firefighting effort at 6 a.m. Tuesday, taking the reins from Team 3, which led fire operations beginning in its first few days. A self-described “twice-failed retiree” from fire management who lives in Jefferson County, Smith said he was walking into one of his first meetings before assuming command of the fire when he got the news.
“We were literally getting ready to do our in-brief with the agency administrators,” he recalled, “when we heard over the radio [about] the helicopter incident.”
The fatal crash at Silver Jack Reservoir on Sunday, which killed 56-year-old pilot Nicholas Dale, threw a wrench in “what is normally a very planned process of transition” between incident management teams overseeing firefighting operations.
“Our normal transition process, which is a very rehearsed process, went right out the window,” Smith said.
With lines holding in Ouray County’s most populated areas along the Uncompahgre Valley, Smith said the hundreds of firefighters under his command are now largely using an indirect strategy of containment, working further from the flames to keep building their box.
“This is an area that hasn’t seen fire in hundreds of years,” Smith said. “And it’s in spruce and fir, which is a very challenging fuel type, because when fire gets into spruce and fir versus the pine varieties – the spotting distances, how many embers it throws up – is much higher than a lot of the other tree types out there.”
“So with this one, this is tough,” he added. “It’s in terrible terrain. It’s in spruce fir, and we’re in an historic drought in an area that hasn’t seen fire.”
While storms Tuesday afternoon largely blew the Gold Mountain Fire back on itself, neighboring Hinsdale County wasn’t as lucky. The Elk Fire, which began on July 9 in even more remote and inaccessible country, rocketed from about 575 acres Tuesday to nearly 2,000 acres Wednesday, a figure officials were only able to determine after a high-elevation infrared flight survey.
A spokesperson for the Gold Mountain Fire team said that aerial crews dropped retardant and water around the full perimeter of the Elk Fire when it began, all of which failed to stop its spread.
Meanwhile, in what’s been dubbed Division Zulu, encompassing the interior of the Uncompahgre Wilderness southeast of the Cimarrons, the fire has remained quiet – a positive since Smith said that inaccessible terrain and safety concerns have left crews with limited options in that area.
“Out on the federal lands, fire is a cathartic component in the ecosystem,” Smith said. “We’re not saying we want fire, but if we can keep it on federal lands, let fire do what fire does, that reduces the impacts for the future.”
Chart Riggall is a journalist with Report for America, a nonprofit program that helps boost reporting resources in underserved areas. He’s also part of the Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative, a partnership between Report for America, High Country News and local news organizations across the West.
