By Mary Alice Murphy
[Editor's Note: This was from the Monday night meeting and we are going to start writing the Friday night meeting. In the effort to get to the second article, this one was not proofed. Excuse typos and if something is confusing, contact,
Forest Service Public Information Officer Starr Farrell served as the facilitator for the June 12, 2025 public meeting on the Trout Fire. She reported that at that time, the fire had grown to 18,278 acres. "Containment is 0% and we have 755 personnel on the fire. During this community meeting, we're going to have an opportunity to answer some questions."
She requested that no one speak or ask questions until the microphone had been brought to them."It's really important that when we are doing this section of the meeting, that you only talk when you have the microphone, because we are also streaming this online for folks who cannot attend this evening, and they will not be able to hear you unless you have a microphone in your hands."
Farrell explained the first part of the meeting would be an opportunity for folks that are part of the complex system command committee to come up and present information.
RobRoy Williams with operations spoke first, as the Operations Section Chief. "We took the fire over on Saturday morning at 0600. And I'll give you guys a rundown of currently where we're at with our current operations on the Trout Fire."
He used maps and started with the west end of the fire along Highway 15. "We've had quite a few crews that have been out there, working where the point of origin is. We've been working down highway 15 to to where it turns into the Mimbres Valley, around the Lake Roberts area where the values of risk are."
Williams continued: "We've had quite a few crews going in there, working around those structures, in there, pumping around the structures. We've had a structural protection group that's been going in and evaluating those coming in with Springboard kits, where they need to. They put a mix of hand line and dozer, around the Forest Service property there, all the way down the 15 to the 35 and heading south there. And really the the main reason why we've been doing that is, that fire has been kind of pushing down some of the nighttime slopes in there. What we want to do is be ahead of it, so we can come in with some defensive firing in there when the timing is right. What you can kind of see what we've done a little bit on the west end of the fire, as a couple days ago, fire made some pretty big pushes out there. With the warm, hot, dry conditions and the dry fuel conditions and with the extreme drought that the areas received all year in a lack of rain, it has really provided some pretty extreme fire behavior. So two days ago, we have made a push out there. There were some roads out there. We were able to do some firing to bring it to highway 35 there. And now the point on that north end of the fire is at nighttime we're coming in and and putting fire at the right time to the right place, doing some defensive firing around the houses, taking it back to the east towards Lake Roberts to tie in to the highway 15 there, so we can remove the risk of the values, the critical values, the critical values of the homes and residents there in the Lake Roberts area, as you guys can see now out there. As you know, the last few days, fire behavior has been pretty active with us. Kind of brings us down into where the problematic areas have been—along the south into the fire there just north of Signal Peak going up into the Meadow Creek area that's been really active. It's pretty rough train up there. We have been doing a pretty heavy commitment where weather allows us to come in with fixed-wing retardant and trying to lay some retardant in there. With the dry conditions, the fire really just cruises through that retardant. And with us not being able to put folks directly on the line with it, it just kind of buys us some time. We do have five type one helicopters that have been working using the Lake Roberts area to support the crews down on the ground, trying to buy a little bit of time so we can piece together a container line to keep it kind of north of Silver City. The wind this afternoon and fire behavior kind of picked up. We've been flying retardant on it since about noon. That's when the weather cleared out. It's making some big pushes down on the southeast corner of the fire, and it's kind of come out, making its way down towards the Allie Canyon area. We've got crews in there, who've been evaluating that and coming up with a plan to kind of piece together some opportunities out there. We've been evaluating it every day and looking for those opportunities at as the fire kind of allows us to so we can go in and keep it tight there. We're also taking a look at a lot of the stuff that's down south and coming up with a bigger plan. So if we're not successful, we're looking at Signal Peak Road and then through some of that country in the southeast corner of the fire.
"Just to kind of let you guys know, they said we have 755, people assigned to the fire," he continued. "That's 19 crews. And that's a mix between type one hot shot crews, type two crews that are out there that are working 24 hours around the clock. We have very robust day and night shifts going right now. We have 38 engines to help protect those values of risk, as well as as we come up with a plan down on the south with the aircraft. We have five type one helicopters, one type two helicopter and three type three helicopters that have been working with fire during the days that provide support for crews out on the ground.
He then switched to talk about the evacuation process. About 30 minutes ago, before we came into this meeting, the southeast corner of the fire really picked up activity. We had critical fire weather watches today, and some of the winds we had just kind of pushed the fire down towards Allie Canyon in there. That was kind of our trigger point for zone four, The Bear Canyon dam area. We wanted to get that order going. The sooner we do it gives time for law enforcement to go out there and make sure those people can get out.We also put zone 10, 11 and 12, to a set status. We're doing a swap between our day shift and night shift. So our night shift folks will be going out there and picking up where our day shift folks left off. They're going to evaluate what opportunities they have down in that southeast border tas fire comes down close to 35 and bring a little bit of fire back up the road to the main fire, where we stopped the evening before last.
"We hope, within two shifts, to have all the stuff that's on the north end of the fire completed and to have removed all the risk of fire. And we'll really be concentrating the rest of our resources out there and concentrating on the south end of the fire. I think with that, that's kind of got us up to the point of where we're at, and we'll answer any questions later on when we're done with the rest of the report.
"My name is Thomas Bird. I am an incident meteorologist with the National Weather Service, and when I'm not out on a fire, my day job is with the National Weather Service forecast office down in San Teresa, El Paso. And so this is home territory for me, and the team has a lot of expectations for me because I've been doing this here in this area for 30 years.
"I'm here as a meteorologist on the wildfire right now, and I will talk about the three different things that influence the wildfire," Bird continued. "We call it the fire behavior triangle, and weather is probably one of the most critical pieces that are involved. I'm sure you know that with the winds, and with how dry, how hot, how unstable, all that influences and affects how how a wildfire burns."
He showed eight slides and explained how "we got to a where we are today, and a little short term forecast. And then we're going to look forward towards the end of month at what we got coming weather wise, because all that's going to impact operations and safety and evacuations."
The first slide he showed were maps of where precipitation had fallen in the region. Over the past six month, Grant County has received 18 percent of what is expected as normal precipitation in the area.
Bird told people not to look at the numbers, but to look at the colors. "If the colors are orange, that means that area has seen below normal precipitation. Where they're blue and green, that's where they've seen above normal precipitation. And if you look in that white circle for every time scale, this area has been red, which is well below normal on precipitation all the way back to last year. And we've had a couple of poor monsoon seasons, and so we've been going in and out and in now with drought. And we did some calculations on all the eight forest raw sites that we had for the most automated weather stations. And it comes out to where over the last six months, we've only seen 18% of the normal precipitation that we should be seeing. So we're extremely critically dry as far as we go."
The next slide showed the stages of drought, which go all the way to exceptional. :And if you look at that national maximum and look for that dark, dark red color, you only see it here and in some parts of Texas. So there's no place in the rest of the country that is in a worse drought stress situation than we are in this area right now.
The bottom showed a time series of when the area went from exceptionally or abnormally dry to moderate drought to severe to extreme, to now exceptional. "So you can see we've been accumulating this since mid last year. We've been getting dryer by the month, and this all compounds, and that impacts how dry fuels get, how receptive they are to fire."
He noted that the month of June so far had had fairly typical weather conditions, albeit a bit warming. Tuesday, he said, would have the highest winds.
The eighth slide had good news with the National Weather Service showing that the outlook for monsoon is to be at least on time and possibly early, and to be near normal or possibly above normal, which we haven't been in a few years. That's really good news.He also showed outlooks for next week, and then the next one week for the next week. And what you see is the potential for us to be either above normal, normal or below normal, for both temperature on the left, precipitation on the right. And what's important on the right is we're starting to see green, and green is probabilities are favoring above normal precipitation for these periods.
The next speaker identified himself as Mark (unintelligible last name), the Air Resource advisor. He commented on the bad air quality the previous two nights, and told participants to expect the same on Tuesday morning. "Our typical worst conditions is when you hit 300 or higher on the scale. We hit 1400 so we're just like pushing that scale beyond where it should be. We're going to see that again tonight. Unfortunately, once the wind Street, relax. We may need to issue the outlook to include one more night with the winds tomorrow. We'll see how much fire gets going tomorrow, but that means if we get a lot of fire, we're going to have a lot of smoke. By time we get to Thursday, Friday looks like we'll have a little bit of a southeast component, which will give some of the smoke, not all, but some smoke away from us. And so with a little bit more moisture in that air coming from the southeast, fire may be detained. So we hope to see a gradual improvement. If you live farther to the east, you're going to see a decline in the amount of smoke. That would be folks in Rio Grande Valley, because the smoke will be carried out that way in that nighttime and will settle into the Rio Grande Valley. So if you have folks out there, they're going to see more smoke in the next few days, and we'll see less after about Wednesday or Thursday.
Jim King, fire behavior analyst for Team Four, thanked Shelly Crook for some of the information he would be showing. Shelly lives in this community. "She is a retired forest service person, an outstanding asset to you folks. And I borrowed some of this stuff from her. As Tom mentioned, weather is obviously part of the fire triangle. Weather fuels topography. Weather influences the fuel. So the slide you're looking at here are the weather stations across the Gila forest and showing the Gila Center closest to the Trout Fire, being at 23% of normal from January to May of this year, if you go to the next slide. So what this is, is an average of all weather stations across the forest looking back to June of last year. And what you can see is that last year's monsoon locally was pretty good. June was a little bit above July was a little bit above, August, not quite there. But once we get to September, especially, you can see the rest of the fall last year, then January through June this year, way below normal. I know you all live here, and I know you know it's dry. This is trying to paint the picture for all of us, as far as how dry we it is. We're talking when we have a situation like this, that it impacts what we call our live fuels, so our oak trees, our ponderosa pines, junipers, there was really a little green up. The folks around here below, like 7000 feet, some of them didn't even put any new leaves on this year,. Those live fuels right now are down 70% and maybe lower by now. To help you out, if live fuels get to 50% , they are dormant and on the verge of not living any longer. So that's the impact to the live fuel.
The next slidecalled energy release component graph, the ERC. This is used to measure basically how dry the dead fuels are. So the logs and the branches that are on the ground, how dry they are. The higher the chart, the drier they are. The solid purple line this year 2025, is above what's called the 97 percentile. So only 3% of the days since 2008 have been in two other years on this graph to get up to that percentile. One, the green line is from 2013 and the dotted, whatever color that is, is from 2022 and I'm guessing 2013 was a large fire in the Black Range, the Silver Fire. And 2022 saw another large fire, again in the Black Range and the Black Fire. "This team was on the Black Fire right at the end, and you can see those three years went back and forth for setting records for how dry our dead fuels are."
The next slide, a map, showed the Trout Fire in the dead center of your screen. It is surrounded by prescribed burns, fuels treatments that have happened around the area. Other colors showed old burns that have been in the area.
"When you see smoke, you kind of wonder where and what's burning.," he pointed out the area where it began."You can see there was no previous fire history there. With no prescribed burns, it was an area that did not have disturbance in a long time. Fire started there, burned to the east, about four to five miles through terrain that was all relatively rolling, with really no topographic features to interrupt that fire spread. Once you got the Friday up here, it started to hit some north, south canyons that interrupted that wind, and it kind of checked up to slow down. We arrived on Saturday. The fire got worked around the almost ahead of the Meadow Creek. It started to make a big push. It got around Skates and Westgates Canyon and made another four to five mile push out to here, and that's when we were able to grab on it. And I think it's already been mentioned today. You know, the activity is mostly just north of Allie Canyon and then back around on the edge of that Signal fire from 2014." He showed a short video is from an interior pocket that hadn't burned over on the east side of the fire.
"I was in Meadow Creek today, and that has the similar fire behavior. There is also good burning along the ground that is good fire behavior out there too. There is going to be mosaic when this fire is done. I'll close with kudos to the community and kudos to the Forest Service. The burns that this fire has impacted has been absolutely crucial to this fire. There's burns in the highway 35 corridor. There are areas that have allowed resources to plug in, be able to fire and be able to pull up their firing to protect the community and resources down there. So sometimes it's not fun as a community to have smoke outside of fire season, but it's crucial, I'll be here for questions."
"I'm Mike Evans assistant commander training. So I want to start out by thanking this community. When we got here, we hit the ground running, and it always takes us a day or two get our feet under us, but we were ahead of the game. The community was already supporting us and did a lot of work for us. This facility here, with both of us, the school down the road, and then the law enforcement. Thank you and your men and women that have jumped in with the state police. It's been incredible working with you. So I come from Southern Arizona, and I thought that was the worst fuel could be .Then I came into New Mexico. I've done this for 33 years, or something like that. I've never seen it like this bad. So I knew right off the bat that we had a lot of challenges to try and deal with. And being here on the Black Fire, I kind of knew where it was at. You guys are out, here so you know how challenging it is. The the other thing, once I realized the communities that were impacted, that are threatened, that's the challenge that it always is, because I know how it affects you, how it affects your families and and how it affects your livelihood, so that that's always the biggest, the biggest work for us. We want to be able to communicate what we're doing and and we want to protect your home as much as we can. And so that's why we you're going to watch this. We're going to watch this grow quite a bit. We're going to get a little bit bigger and and continue this fight. I know Tom gave us some really good news for the outlook. We're not going to plan on that in the fight. We're going to go that rain's not coming. And we have crews and engines up there working 24 hours. So we have two shifts day and night. We're going to continue to fight that fight. They're going to find those areas where they can hit, if you don't see a lot of them, a lot of times it's too smoked in, and we don't want to risk the pilots to drop and maybe miss. So with that being said, I'll close with that. And again, I want to thank this community every time we come here, New Mexico is always very welcoming, and I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 31:58
They closed out the information with Silver City District Ranger ElizabethToney.
"As the district ranger and a member of this community, it's always tough to see smoke go up and kind of makes you feel a little sick. And so I feel that having had to evacuate my mom from her cabin a couple of years ago, I understand that the anxiety that goes with that, what are you going to do with animals? What's up? Even when you're ready, you may not be ready. I get how impacting the smoke is,? I have friends with asthma, they're coughing, their lungs are filling up, making sure they have their inhaler, their backup inhaler. I feel for my firefighters out there who are breathing in smoke day and night trying to put this thing out. I feel for my permittees, who we've had to ask and in a hurry round up some cattle out there. They already didn't have a lot of forage this year. It's just super dry out there. And I tasked this team with full suppression, and that's a tough ask. It's tough out there. It's really dry, but we're throwing everything we can at it. We have national resources out there. And I know this team is also listening to our local firefighters, who have a lot of knowledge about fire in this area, and they're taking that to heart. We have a lot of air resources out there. I wanted to let you all know that we're going to have to expand the closure order that we currently have in place, and we're doing that because we need you safe, and I need my firefighters safe, so look for that to come tomorrow. I would like to thank this team for taking on this challenge. As you can tell, they got a lot of talented folks on this team. Their liaisons are outstanding. We've had cooperator meetings, and I really appreciate those cooperators that are showing up. PNM, New Mexico State Forestry, our permittees, D O T, Sheriff's Department, state police. Chris Ponce, County Commissioner, I don't know where he is. He's been extremely involved. Charlene Webb, your county manager, really engaged. They are working to make this evacuation system better. They are working with the sheriff's department and State Police on that. There's been a lot of coordination on all of that. So things can always be better, but I want you to know that a lot of efforts can put into that. So I'll be around here this evening. If you have questions for me, I'm here to answer them.
They then went into the question and answer portion of today. Jennifer has the mic. So if you have a question, you can raise your hand. She has an amazing memory. She's going to remember who raised their hand also. So you don't want to hang out there forever, the whole time, and she's just going to work her way around the whole room.
A woman asked: I just need to know my daughter-in-law is down in Mimbres area, and she would like to get her horse and mule and her RV out. And I'm wondering if I can get on highways 35 to help her? She has fairly close to Casas Adobes.
Answer: Actually right now that area is still open. I believe the closure is up by the post office on 35. So if you need to get up to Casas Adobes, it's still an availability. I know that they have the roadblock further up. So you should be okay with that. I'm sure, and I am Sheriff.
A man asked about a friend who lives in Lake Roberts who had to evacuate and go to Las Cruces, and her question is, does it look like it's going to move away from Lake Roberts?
A: At the lake Roberts itself, you know, at night, fire does kind of push down in there. We have a plan that we will be having to take, and it'll be a low intensity fire at night, but we will be putting fire west along or east along 35 halfway to Lake Roberts, to the Highway 15 road. We hope to be done within the next tonight and tomorrow night. Once that's done, we're hoping that we can go secure the area, and once any of the risk and safety is removed from there, then you know, in a few days out, that I can't say exactly when, but then we would be able to allow folks to go back.
Q. Will it burn to the southeast again as it did today?
I appreciate the question, but you're not going to like the answer, but it does depend. Tomorrow's fire behavior is going to depend on how it how it sets up and ends, today's shift, and where it burns, and how it burns through the night, so where it's positioned tomorrow morning. Okay, so it doesn't just depend, but generally speaking, we do have drainages that do line up west to east. Alliey Canyon. There's one north of that, there's one south of that. I forget the names. With the highest winds that are forecasted this fire has the potential move towards highway 35 substantially tomorrow, based on the forecasted, if the fire is set up properly to do that tonight.
Q; How is thisinformation going to be disseminated?
Webb: To the public as to when evacuation of orders are lifted from certain areas that are under evacuation and speaking on behalf of our emergency manager, what you will receive whenever you are placed in a zone, you will receive a reverse 911 notification. We use a system called IPAWS, which is very similar to when you receive an amber alert or something of that nature, and your phone goes off, you're going to get oneof those.
Q: So someone mentioned zone 12 for evacuation, but I didn't see that.
A. Zones 10, 11 and 12 are in a set status. And that just means that we're just kind of putting people on notice that that risk could change and a go could be imminent, maybe as soon as the next 24 to 48 hours, hopefully they don't end up going there. But want folks to be ready so they can get the things they need to be able to get out in a more organized fashion. Well ahead of the time before the fire gets through.
Q.What's the probability of the zones coming further west towards?
A: Basically, I would say low west and southwest winds will move fire north and northeast Even the southeast winds that Tom talked about, even that's not going to steer it south and west. The caveat to that, just just to be fully transparent, is that's all prevailing winds. Andone of the unfortunate things about getting into the monsoon season is once we've got wind and thunderstorms, those are hard to predict. Those can kind of come from any direction. So as long as we have it fully set up in the monsoon season, we're we're talking prevailing south, southeast or southwest, anything but basically a northeast wind. It's going to take a long time to get here.
Q: We have property with some cabins at the end of Blue Canyon Road. And so we're just kind of wondering how close the fire is to that. It's to the south of Allie Canyon.:
A: The fire is still north of Bear Canyon, It may funnel toward Allie Canyon.We do have folks going in and evaluating structures. We do daily IR flights at night, so we get kind of a picture of current acres on fire or not. It's close to Bear Canyon and we're trying to use Signal Peak Road as a barrier.
It's still about a mile or so away. The area of the fire has been pretty active backing down into Meadow Creek in there, we probably put 15 or 16 loads of large air tankers, or very large air tankers in there. We're hoping that what we're doing is going to be successful to check the fire where it's at currently, and then either tonight or in the morning, you know, we could go in there and maybe pick up some of that edge to be able to keep it north of tSignal Peak.We were going to fly some helitag eyes in there this morning so they could go in and start doing some structure preparation, removing some vegetation around the areas. But unfortunately, with the smoke and things like that, we weren't able to get in there today, but we are planning on getting in there as soon as possible.
Q: We were wondering if the fire had crossed 35 on the north side there. And also, have any structures been lost in this fire?
A: So I can answer both of those with 100% certainty. Fire has not crossed anywhere east of 35 at all. The fire is all west of 35 within that containment line, as far as any structures that have been lost or damaged, no structures have been lost or damaged to this point.
Q: And areas where the fire is crowning?
A: Yes, absolutely. Those two, the first day, for sure, I think those big days when there was a column up there that involved crowning fire.
Sheriff Raul Villanueva said: Currently, we have patrols in the area, state police, and the sheriff's office is diligently patrolling 35 and all that area. And if we do encounter something, where we come across a home that that has possibly caught fire, we will try and get a hold of the owner. We are keeping track of all the residents out of the area, who owns the properties and stuff like that. So something we did encounter that we will make an effort to get in contact with the owner and get that information out to you guys. I hope I answered the question.As the deputies and police officers have been going out to speak to residents and doing the evacuation, they've been tasked with taking the owner's name, information, phone number, contacts, stuff like that. So that's how we would be able to know who the property belongs to.
Another answer to the crowing question for those who didn't know what it meant. It just means burning through the the canopies of your larger trees, your ponderosa pine, your Douglas fir. It means fires going from the ground all the way up through the crowns, and sometimes carrying through the crowns, and that's called a crown fire.
Q: I need to know when we can get access back up there, because I'm going to lose my entire supply of food in my freezer
and refrigerators. I need access.
A: We're working around the clock until we can remove the risk for the safety of the fire and the weight of the fire is going down towards Camp Thunderbird. You know, we still have a lot of suppression efforts going into that area at risk from fire. We're going to try to get that opened up to folks as soon as we can. But to give you a timeline right now, I really couldn't tell you is that 2, 3 4, days, but we will continue to keep folks updated, and that's as soon as we can, we'll allow folks to get back in.
Q: What is the likelihood of the fire getting to Cherry Creek? I know some people who live there who are out-of-town.. Do I have any probability of getting there?
A: It's going to be, it depends. There's just so many variables about how fire sets up each day that the weather the following day may or may not impact it, depending on how it sets up. Please come find me after. We'll talk probability specific to you and the fire behavior. Again, it just depends on how the fire sets up each day, depending on what the weather the following day is going to do to the fire. I wish I had a more specific answer.
Q: Pinos Altos resident here, given the nature of the fire and where it resides right now, currently coming up towards Signal Peak and such and with our westerly winds and moving predominantly northeast and predicted to start moving more southeast over the next day or two, given the topography of the canyon structures as it moves southeast. It looks to me like the probability of some of these directional canyons are going to be more of an east-west nature. I'm just asking the question for the Pinos aAtos residents there, myself included, what is the potential of us being in harm's way with that fire circling around and then moving even though the we have westerly winds traveling down those troughs.
A: That's a hard question. I would say, to put some time frames with that. I would say in the next week, looking at our weather a couple of bad days we have, and then maybe more moderating conditions. If Tom's forecast plays out, I'd say that's a lower probability of happening, as mentioned before, though, with another question. You know, once the monsoons do set up on the front end of them, we do get thunderstorms built up. We get those outflows that we don't know what direction we're coming from that could change things, but in the next week, I would say it's a low probability of Pinos Altos being impacted.
Q: I need some assurance. I don't have an area code for this area. Will I get a call?
A: This a reverse 911 outreach, and it goes to all cell phones in the area targeted. The system, IPAWS (integrated public alert and warning system) reaches every cell phone in the area, visitors, as well as those with the area code for this area, even if you're just driving through and up to an hour later, you might get the alert.
Q:Some of us were evacuated from Gila Hot Springs, but a lot stayed. What's going on on the western end of the fire?
A: The Fire really hasn't been pushing to the west northwest with us, especially with the westerly winds. Again, with our strategy and tactics that we're employing there along the 35 corridor to take fire all the way back to highway 15, I would say the probability is really low for it to go up and impact the Gila Hot Springs and trap those folks. You know they cut off the power, so, those folks don't have any power out there. And being there's a one way in, one way out, that was kind of some of the rationale for evacuating.
Q: We know that southwestern New Mexico is a tinder box. And I hate to say this, but this was something that was ready to happen. And the question I have for the Forest Service is, when are they going to open more for logging, for a more woodcutting, for more cleaning of our forest, so this doesn't happen. I'm not saying cut the whole forest down, but the forest can actually do some form of maintenance to work. Hopefully this won't happen again.
A: I hear you, and we're we're aware of the executive order to increase timber. Some of our challenges have been actually related to how local producers can actually harvest that timber. Cull rates, things of that nature. So our main producers are actually located in the northern part of the forest, and we don't have a lot here in Silver City. So those producers are focused a lot on, like one of them, in particular, on permits, Jack Cameron and harvesting up there. And we have another one that's busy with the two timber sales we have going on right now in the Quemado and Reserve areas. I hear you and say, we can look into opportunities to this area, but we don't have the local producers to really make that a real option.
Q: One of my questions is, will there be another meeting like this? Or should we just plan to get information on the inciweb and those avenues? But my main question is that, if the fire does move towards structures and towards communities, how does the protocol change and how you defend those structures?
A: Yes, we do plan on having another meeting. As far as structures, we have a structure protection specialist. We go out, we evaluate the structures out there that are in the fire path, of What's going to be impacted by the fire, and we pre-planned. We put the crews in where they need to be. We'll get structure protection kits so we can put sprinklers around the house and do things like that, so that we can give it the best chance as possible. We can't say 100% that you're not having any damage from a fire, but our plan is not to have anything happen on the fire, and we're going to put the people, resources and equipment in the right places in order to do that.
Q: I was wondering when access up to the Gila Hot Springs might be available. I I work up there. Besides just wondering, or can I sneak through on 35 real quick, I need to go up there.
A: It is a hard closure, and as Rob said earlier, we can't let anybody in there until that risk is reduced. As to fire behavior. w e do predict that, where we think that fire is going to go some of the time, but when the fire does do what it needs to do, so we can't, we can't let you get in there.
Q: This isn't a question, but there's a group of people the Knights
of Columbus, who are cooking food for anybody who's hungry
They're cooking over there right now, and they said it should be ready about 8:30.
[Applause]
The next speaker was from the Red Cross. I do also want to let you know that we are here located on the other side of the building. It is the shelter. If whether, if you just want some information or anything like that, please stop by, come and see us. We also are providing some meals. We have water, anything you need. Please come see us. We're here. We're holding your hand, and I'm in good connection with Scot as the emergency manager, so we're here to support you.
Q: Who decides when the power is going to blow up and
where?
A: Good evening. I'm Wes Gray. I'm Executive Director of Field Operations for PNM, so thank you for your question. My team is working extensively with the Operations Branch, and so we're deciding where we need the outages for the protection of the firefighters that are out there and their operations so as soon as they determine it's safe enough for us to go back into that area, we are patrolling to make sure that, the line is safe to re-energize. We hope to be able to turn it back on on Friday or Saturday, dependent on what the fire does over the next few days. So it's it's a challenge for us too, because we want to get you back on but we're de-energizing those lines so it's safe for the firefighters, their firing operations, and all the work they do out there. We don't want to put them at risk by having that energized power line in there, so we understand the inconvenience of it and all the impact it has for you and your homes. We sincerely apologize for that, but the safety of the firefighters is paramount while they're trying to get control of fire. So that's what we're focused on
Q: I have a question for the Red Cross. I heard somebody ask if people could bring their pets, and on Facebook, they said, No.
A: So right now, because this is a shared space, we as Red Cross do accept pets, and we are working with the Humane Society. They've been great partners. So that's also what's being coordinated. I know our fur babies are our family. So we also want to make sure so we do accept pets, but in the facility we currently are, we do not have that capability, but we're working also on that getting pets and their people together is really important.
Q: A friend is listening on Facebook, and she wants to know we live at the base of Allie Canyon along New Mexico 35. What are you doing to protect our structures there right now?
A: We've got, we got folks out there. We're in the middle of, like I said, our night shift. Folks are heading out to the line. They're they're doing a a pass down with all the, day shift folks to see, you know where those residents are. I know our divisions group supervisors are out there, and they're going to be prioritizing, you know, those structures out in that area to make sure fire does not impact those things tonight. So we there's a lot of structures up and down that road, right? And we're taking each and every one of them seriously. And we have to see where the fire is going to impact those first. The other thing we're going to be doing is we have what we call trigger point sets. So as the fire progresses, if it does progress close to down to 35 again, we'll we'll start doing a firing operation along 35 so we can provide some defensible space between where the residents are and the fire. We'll have crews out there overnight. Again, they'll be with the dozers and hand crews putting in hand line around the structure. We want keep the fire on the you know, I guess we'll say the burn side of the structure. We won't necessarily be right along 35 if the houses are on the west side of 35 we'll be putting some type of either equipment or hand line around there, and we'll be having firefighters and equipment there to deal with that. We'll be out there all night, and then in the morning, we'll be having firefighters pick up that work during the day, and they'll pick up where the guys at night work and continue on.
Q: My name is Cody. I'm the pastor at Arise. We have a big parking lot, so if you have RVs or cattle trailers or whatever, please use that. We also have showers. We have space for you to stay in the gym. We will provide food, whatever you need. We're available. So anytime, day or night, a lot of people remember us. We passed out some flyers today, but please get a hold of us. We want to be of help, and we have a parking lot and space for you. That's why we have buildings. That's why we have resources. So please use us if you have any need whatsoever.We have people on call 24 hours a day, so please use them.
Q: I know there's more able bodied people that want to stay and fight or rotect their property. Is the Go subjective? Or is go or else, I guess, I go to jail.
A: No, we can't jerk you out of your house if that's what you want to do or if you want to stay, but we highly encourage if you are on the go status to go ahead and plan on leaving, but know that if you leave the area, you won't be able to go back in. So just plan for that.
Conclusion: For this community meeting, some of our presenters are going to have to leave. They have to attend the things on the fire, but others will remain. So please feel free to come and ask me us questions.
