We had a very close call on February 15th with a fire north of High Mesa that was a result of a controlled burn that was not properly put out. There were some large piles of downed trees that had been partially burned and were ignited by high winds.
Fortunately, the direction the fire was going, which was northeast, was into where the Kokoplelli fire had burned several years ago. That caused the fire to stay on the ground; there was also snow on the ground that had not melted. It still took many firefighters to help extinguish the fire. Several homes were evacuated and without the help of the firefighters, multiple homes would have burned.
I cannot stress enough times that our entire community needs to take very seriously the cleaning of their property from tall grass, overgrown trees, scrub brush, and pine needles.
It seems like every year we dodge multiple incidents that could turn into major devastation and loss of homes.
Below is a picture of the fire while it was going on. I drove up next to homes that had their property cleaned up, and the fire burned right up next to several of the homes, but did no harm because the property had been cleaned up. This fire would have gotten completely out of control if the fire fighters had not responded so quickly and some of the homes that were close by had not been cleaned up.
Again, thank you to the people who have been cleaning their properties, and for those of you who have not, please make it a priority to do yours.