Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The First Fire

The first local fire of the season started yesterday. I didn't get a picture of it, but there's a good one on a great local blog I just discovered, Farr Feed. I had been inside all afternoon (escaping the heat) and didn't know anything about it until about 5:30 when Ron got home. He called on his cell phone from the driveway asking about the fire. I ran outside to look and was shocked by the huge cloud of smoke to the northwest of us.

It looked like it was near Tres Piedras, which worried us a little, since we own 40 acres south of TP. We hopped in the car and drove up Blueberry Hill to get a better look. We drove partway up and saw that the fire wasn't quite to TP and wasn't endangering our property, so we turned around and drove home to watch the news and see if they would mention the fire.

It wasn't the top story, of course, but the did mention it. At 6:00, it was only 40 acres, but it continued to grow. They're calling it the Double D Fire, since it's near the Double D Ranch, which is east of Tres Piedras. They expect to have the fire fully contained later today.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The last I read, the fire had spread to 350 acres. I'm not from New Mexico, but I have a close friend who lives in the Taos area, so I'm trying to keep up with the story of the fire.

Are fires like this one common in the Taos area?

Beth said...

Sam - I guess it's still not out yet. I'm not sure how big it's gotten. We had a very wet spring, which caused a lot of growth, followed by a dry summer, so that growth is dead or nearly dead, so there's a lot of fuel for fires. We get really big ones, much bigger than this, every few years. Small ones like this are common every summer.

Anonymous said...

Small??? Good lord! Where I live, that would be considered huge!

Thanks for the info, Beth.