Firefighters on Sunday made significant gains on battling the Toe fire, which has burned since Thursday on Sleeping Ute Mountain southwest of Towaoc. The fire generated a plume of smoke that was seen from Bayfield.
The fire is now at 90 percent contained at 369 acres, information officer Pam Wilson, of the Durango Interagency Dispatch Center, said on Sunday. The Type 3 team began to turn over the fire to a Type 4 incident commander at 7 a.m. Monday because of the limited threat of spread, Wilson said.
“The 20-man Navajo Hotshot crew, a helicopter, and the Towaoc ambulance will remain working the fire,” said incident commander Rich Gustafson. The other three crews, as well a few local resources, were released Sunday evening, and began to travel home on Monday.
The fire, detected about 3 p.m. Thursday, was most likely started by lightning earlier in the week, officials said, because it began two-thirds up the mountain, on the western flank of Hermano Peak, known as “The Knees” area of the Sleeping Ute.
It quickly burned out of control Thursday in a rugged piñon-juniper forest, pushed on by 90-degree temperatures and a stiff wind. Officials and pilots estimated the fire at 300 to 400 acres.
It was zero percent contained as fire crews from the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and Mesa Verde National Park joined Bureau of Indian Affairs crews in the fight. A total of 124 federal firefighters were on the scene battling the blaze.
Thursday: The air battle
Two Single Engine Air Craft (SEAT) were flown in on Thursday, and by 8 p.m., they had dropped seven loads of fire-retardant slurry onto the fire’s path from an altitude of 75 feet. They continued dropping slurry on Friday, and by Saturday were no longer needed.
“It’s moving south, up the slope,” pilot Phill Bragg said Thursday evening. “We’re the initial attack until they get people on the ground.”
The Cortez Fire Protection District served as the ground crew at the Cortez Airport. The planes operated out of the Interagency SEAT Reload Base at the airport.
“We’ve filling up two planes multiple times,” Cortez Fire Chief Jeff Vandevoorde said Thursday. Each plane holds between 700 and 790 gallons of retardant.
Lymon Clayton, acting superintendent for Bureau of Indian Affairs in Towaoc, on Thursday assured residents that no houses or structures were in danger. A communication center on the mountain that includes television antennas, a radio antenna and a repeater station is three miles from the fire and wasn’t damaged, Clayton said. No evacuations or injuries were reported.
Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin, who was apprised of the situation, said, “No homes or structures are in danger.”
According to incident commander Rich Gustafson, the fire behaved typically of fires in piñon-juniper forests, smoldering for a few days until the weather warms up and wind picks up.
“With warm temperatures and wind, the fire picks up and makes a big run, but as soon as the wind disappears, the fire drops to the ground,” he said.
“Our first concern is for firefighter safety,” said Gustafson, who along with the Durango Interagency Type 3 Team, took over management of the fire on Thursday evening.
Upon arriving Thursday, federal firefighters drove in on rough roads, then hiked one to two miles in rugged, steep terrain to reach the fire.
Friday: Help from the skies
Firefighters got more help from the 20-member Northern Colorado crew and 20-member Navajo Hotshots. A base camp was set up near the Ute Farm and Ranch, and crews shuttled by helicopter to the fire line.
A flight Friday morning by the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control Multi-mission aircraft measured the fire at 369 acres, with 20 percent containment.
On Friday, the fire had gotten its official name, the Toe fire.
And firefighters got some help from above: It began to rain.
Steady rainfall Friday afternoon and through midnight helped keep the Toe fire inside its perimeter.
Saturday: Down to earth
As crews went to work on Saturday, officials announced that the rain had helped “cool” the fire. They said, however, they weren’t ready to call the fire “out.”
Firefighters on Saturday began extinguishing hot spots and securing the perimeter of the fire using Minimum Impact Suppression Techniques (MIST). The technique, like cold trailing, means that firefighters must feel for heat with their bare hands and then dig out and extinguish hot spots along the perimeter. The technique was used instead of digging a fire line to minimize further disturbance to sacred Ute land, Wilson said.
Currently a crew of 28 firefighters remain on the Toe fire. Additional moisture is expected in the next two days.
jmimiaga@cortezjournal.com