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The Elkhorn Fire is at 81% containment, the National Fire Information Center said Tuesday, and evacuation notices for the Elkhorn and Celadon subdivisions have been lifted according to the National Interagency Fire Center and La Plata County government.
Elkhorn Fire information officer Brenda Ramirez-Romero said that over the weekend, crews took the fire down from 314 to 298 acres and secured fire lines on the west side of the blaze.
“The crews had been able to put in hand lines throughout the perimeter, and as they’ve been patrolling and mopping up the area, the confidence in those lines securing has improved,” she said.
Operators subsequently dropped the status of evacuation notices for Celadon and Elkhorn from mandatory to voluntary.
Now, Ramirez-Romero said, crews are working to secure the north side of the blaze and in the Bear Creek Drainage, a steep, heavily vegetated canyon where firefighting is difficult. The north side, or Division Alpha, is covered in scrub oak, which has a high probability to catch fire again.
“Crews are going into Division Alpha, and they’re cutting scrub oak as they need to, setting hose lay as they need to, so that they can feel confident in that line,” she said. “The Bear Creek Drainage, as anticipated, is taking longer to mop up and contain.”
U.S. Forest Service spokesperson Lorena Williams said that after the initial rapid response to the fire last week, crews were slowing down and being extra-thorough.
“Our goal isn’t speed so much as being thorough and effectively achieving containment,” she said.
William said an exceptional alignment of factors came together this weekend to help crews make quick progress on containment. They had multiple Hotshot and helitack crews and plentiful resources to respond to the blaze.
“They were able to get a lot of really skilled operators on this fire doing a lot of heavy-duty work,” she said. “We moved pretty fast, and now’s the part where we do our due diligence.”
Williams said two Hotshot crews were reassigned to other fires, leaving one Hotshot crew, a wildland fire module, several engines, the Durango Fire Protection District and a medical team on site. They will continue long-term suppression efforts to prevent flare-ups as hot, dry and windy conditions persist.
“Moving fast is in conflict with being thorough,” Williams said. “With weather like we have right now, if we miss a hot spot – like a little stump hole burning that nobody saw in a week, that could come back to bite us. So we’re not going to play that game.”
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
