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Agencies feel the burn in the Hunter Creek Valley

A historic prescribed burn in the Hunter Creek Valley was deemed successful this past weekend after several agencies coordinated under just the right conditions to ignite 900 acres — in order to rejuvenate forest health and minimize the risk of wildfire. Aspen Public Radio’s Barbara Platts has the story.

The initiative involved the U.S. Forest Service, Pitkin County Open Space, the Aspen Fire Protection District, the Aspen Volunteer Fire Department, Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, Wilderness Workshop and the city of Aspen. The U.S. Forest Service deemed the burn a success.

A helicopter flew over a group that had gathered Saturday morning. They watched as a crew dropped devices that would start the backcountry terrain on fire. Nearly 100 people were on the front lines to make sure everything stayed under control.

Along with the smoke, there was a sense of relief in the air because a mission more than three years in the making was being accomplished right before their eyes.

“As we were driving up the hill this morning, when they were first starting to get the burn going we saw the smoke over the ridge and I was just amazed,” said Sloan Shoemaker, executive director of Wilderness Workshop, a nonprofit based in Carbondale.

He said when this project was first proposed, it was met with a large amount of adversity.

“The reaction was ‘no way, no how, that ain’t ever gonna happen to have fire near Aspen,’” Shoemaker said. “Through slow, painstaking, very deliberate efforts we’ve arrived at this point and so far so good.”

Even once the project was approved, the stars had to align just right in order for the burn to occur. That was mostly because of the concern for public safety, specifically when it came to smoke.

Andrea Holland is the air quality resource adviser for the Upper Colorado River Interagency Fire Management Unit.

“Our main concern is that we want to keep the smoke out of the communities,” she said. “We want it to go up and out and disperse it far and away.”

Tim Mathewson was the incident meteorologist for the Hunter Creek Valley fire. He made the call that it was a go after making sure conditions were perfect.

“We’re always looking at relative humidity,” he said. “We are looking at the temperature, also watching radar, always watching wind and wind flow through the fire areas. So we look for those favorable conditions where we can transport smoke away from sensitive areas.”

 

Two days after the burn, fire and fuels specialist Jim Genung joked that he was having trouble finding anything that went wrong. The air quality over the city of Aspen was not affected and the burn resulted in the ideal mosaic pattern over the 900 acres.

“I was real pleased with the forecasts we were given and the conditions that we worked under really helped us accomplish those smoke management goals, as well as our fire effects goals for the day,” he said. “We are really going to see some good results, I think, from this.”

These types of burns are meant to eradicate forest overgrowth that could lead to wildfires. It also helps to rejuvenate landscapes for wildlife habitat.

Genung said he thinks this was a good opportunity to inform the public of the importance of these burns in order to rejuvenate landscapes and act as a manageable alternative to an inevitable wildfire.

“We got that message out very well with the Hunter Creek prescribed fire,” he said. “And I think we made the public very aware and got them on board.

“I’m hoping. We will have to see the results, but we got a lot of good response.”