Visiting a small piece of the Trout Fire

Article by Mary Alice Murphy

Photos by Mary Alice Murphy and Starr Farrell (each identified)

On Friday, June 27, 2025, this author got to visit a small portion of where the Trout Fire had burned beside NM 15 beyond Signal Peak. She went with Trout Fire public information officer Starr Farrell, Paul Meznerich, who drove, and the Trout Fire BAER (burned area emergency response) public information officer Dick Fleishman.

Required attire included the yellow shirts that everyone wore, including one provided for this author, and yellow hard hats.

Protocol required checking in and checking out of the area the group entered, which was on the blocked off portion of NM 15 from the Ben Lilly outlook to the intersection with NM 35.

The group stopped and got permission before  passing three chipping operations, where the crews were cutting wood and brush next to the road and piling it along the way. The crews would stop at the piles and line up with branches and large twigs to run it through the chipper and then disperse it to mitigate fire.

Fleishman looked for a spot where he could check the soil condition, while explaining what he was doing.

The group stopped in a spot where the trees and bushes were seemingly completely burned and some white ash covered the ground. Before they could head out into the burned area, Meznerich provided some safety tips. Do not remove the hard hat, because burned trees were no longer stable. The same with the ground, because tripping hazards could be a danger, and a depression in the soil could indicate where a tree had burned and it might still be hot below the ground. "Look up, look down and look around."

Fleishman pointed out that as the breeze kicked up ash, some people might think the fire had reignited but it hadn't.

He noted that there were three phases of fire recovery. He said the chipping operations are suppression and response. "Even before a fire is out, the BAER team is called out, but only if the fire burned more than 300 acres. If it's 299 acres, the BAER team is not called out. I was called last Wednesday. They bring in a team of scientists, hydrologists, soil scientists, wildlife biologists. We actually have a fisheries biologist on this one. Engineers, recreation, trails, we have about 20 people in the team, including geographic information system mapping specialists, team leader, and then public affairs, which is my job on this team. I was actually a hydrologist for the Forest Service."

At another stop, Fleishman continued that the first step of the BAER process is to get a satellite product, which is called burned air reflective classification map BARC). The reflection can show the burn severity. "We have to validate that, because that reflection could be a rock. And, you know, this Skates area has one or two rocks and large rock outcroppings. We got into the field yesterday (Thursday)."

He described the spot where they had stopped as moderate to severe burn, but said that he would have to dig to determine the condition of the soil. He dug up a shovelful, and said where he had thought the damage to the soil might be severe, it seemed to be moderate, because it contained an intact root structure in the not too compacted soil. "This is actually in pretty decent shape. Once the rains come, it could become grass again. A lot of the grasses here are fire adapted, so if they aren't too damaged they will sprout up. But these things are heat stressed and likely will have water repellency, which is called hydrophobicity. In real simple terms, unburned soil is like a sponge. There's a lot of air space in it. When it heats and gets long term heat actually those organic materials are pushed down into the soil, and at some point they cool off, and they cool off in a waxy layer."

He poured a little water on the ground, and a bubble sat there a bit before soaking into the soil. "That's a concern, because if it sits there and doesn't pretty quickly soak in, that's hydrophobic soil. This is close to being hydrophobic."

Fleishman said just looking at the area, with all the trees black and lots of white ash, he thought it might be high burn severity. Where the soil is more hydrophobic, water would rush right over it, which, of course causes flooding, because the soil is no longer a sponge to pull the water into it.

Among the BAER team, hydrologists are looking at the soil for hydrophobicity; engineers are looking at the roads, the crossings and drainages; the trails team members are looking at the trails to see if the trails will be usable or might they wash away in a flood; the archaeologists are looking at cultural area, especially if they are on the National Register; wildlife biologists are looking at the wildlife, especially the impacts on threatened and endangered species. "They were out looking at spotted owl packs yesterday, with a pack being a protected activity center, where their nests often are. The fishery folks are checking a couple of endangered species and their critical habitat. The recreation guys were checking out campgrounds on NM 35. One campground had a hazard tree that needed to be removed."

"By the end of today or mid-morning tomorrow (Saturday), they'll have all their field work done," Fleishman continued. "They'll take that and create a soil burn severity map. They'll take that initial BARC map and actually adjust it based on field observations. Obviously, they're not walking the whole  thing. They're sampling areas of concern. But one of the things was, when you fly this thing, and we have put five different flight videos of our BAER team that flew it on on Tuesday, up on the BAER incweb site, so you can kind of see there's some really steep stuff that's really, really black that, may be showing as moderate and it may be more severe."

He noted that Sunday, they would be sharing the maps with the public cooperators, which include command operators, truck operators, Grant County Sheriff's Department, National Resources Conservation Service, Soil and Water Conservation District, the New Mexico Department of Transportation, the NM Department of Homeland Security and the National Weather Service, which will be putting out the flood watches and warnings out of the El Paso office. He noted the NRCS was the only one that could work on private land. The soil and water conservation districts can request emergency watershed protection status.

He also remarked that none of the flood water would be heading toward Silver City, but would mainly go to Sapillo Creek on the west side of the continental divide and to the Mimbres River on the east side.

Farrell pointed out a tiny thread of smoke coming out from under a burned tree and she said she could hear crackling from other hot spots. Fleishman grabbed his shovel and took care of the one hot spot, but others could be seen around the area. "You're going to find things this size all over the forest. That's why it takes a while to grow the containment percentages, because we're looking for things like this."

Fleishman also noted that many of the plants in the Gila National Forest are fire adapted. For instance, alligator junipers can send out a basal sprout and the tree grows back from there. Gambel oaks also have basal sprouts. He said Ponderosa pines have three fire-adapted responses. When they drop their needles each year, those are three-year-old needles that fall on the ground to promote fire spread along the ground. He noted they have a real thick bark that can withstand low intensity fire. "They have on the end of their terminal button, on the end of the leaf, they actually have a protective sheath that actually is an insulation layer. So that is its fire adaptation for low severity fire, which that's what it has evolved with."

Farrell said that during the public meetings, several speakers had talked about this fire showing a mosaic. "See that area over there. The dead grasses are still there. They haven't burned. The area has not seen fire, although it is surrounded by it.That's what they mean by mosaic. Not everything burns." Blue gramma grass stalks from last year were visible in the unburned area.

Fleishman said the BAER work lasts for the first year. Ideally it starts before the first flooding event, but that doesn't usually happen in this area, because fires come right before the rains. The three phases of recovery are first, the suppression and response, then the full-year of BAER work, then there's the long-term recovery on the forest. Respond and recover, repair with the fire team and then long-term recovery.

He pointed out buck brush, which has a serotinus seed, meaning that it has to have fire to open and germinate. And with trees, aspen trees are usually the first to come back after a fire.

When asked about what the long white or orange stripes on the ground were, he explained that had been a dead log that burned. "When you see that, it shows that the fuels, called the 1000-hour fuels were really, really dry, perhaps as low as 10 percent. Grasses are one-hour fuels."

He also noted that his BAER team would likely be gone by the end of the following week.

Photos by Starr Farrell:

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Photos by Mary Alice Murphy:

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