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Fire crews are continuing with ignitions on the American Creek Prescribed Fire today after treating 450 acres on Wednesday.

The prescribed fire is an understory burn, which mimics fire’s natural role in vegetation communities where it is frequent and low intensity. Crews apply fire broadly throughout an area under the forest canopy where grasses, leaf litter, fallen and dried pine needles, downed branches, brush and occasional single or clusters of trees are burned.

Today, crews will continue with more hand and aerial ignitions.

• Hand ignitions are used on the prescribed fire unit’s perimeter, where crew members use drip torches to burn fuels along a predetermined control line, which is made up of existing roads and lines dug by hand crews and dozers. This method is called blacklining.
• Aerial ignitions are used for burning interior areas of the unit’s perimeter, in which an operator aboard a helicopter releases plastic balls filled with glycol that ignite after hitting the ground. This method employs a device called a plastic sphere dispenser.

Yesterday, crew members on the ground blacklined much of the eastern half of the prescribed fire unit before aerial ignitions commenced.

Smoke will continue to be visible and may be noticeable to nearby communities during the day and farther out ones in the evening.

For more information about smoke readiness, go to the Carson National Forest’s new website section about prescribed fire, where readers can also learn more about fire ecology, types of prescribed fire and sign up to get notifications.

An InciWeb page is also available for updates.

The 1,009-acre American Creek Prescribed Unit is part of the Rio Tusas-Lower San Antonio Landscape Project, which aims to restore the forest health throughout nearly half of the Tres Piedras Ranger District. The project is part of the larger Rio Chama Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project to address forest and watershed health in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado.