NM Fire info!

Rio Fire as seen from the santa fe relief route on 5/31/10


It is already a doozy of a fire season. There have been a number of relatively close fires that have covered the town with smoke and disquietude. In an effort to find out more information about the Rio Fire last month (~1000 acres near fenton lake, 30 miles or so away from here) I stumbled upon the NM fire info Blog and twitter feed.

http://nmfireinfo.wordpress.com/

Sweet! Good use of the new media to get timely info out without having to filter through the relatively abominable local news websites. My only criticism is they should have maps of where the fires are as the location descriptions are a bit hard to follow as they use somewhat odd baselines. But overall very comforting.


Tecolote or South Fork fire (need that map, read a bit more, it is south fork, 12000 acres and counting), seen from town, 6-18-10


Los Alamos has had a long history of damaging wildfires. Having almost lost the entire town and lab to fire in the early years and then again most recently with the catastrophic Cerro Grande Fire just over a decade ago. For a first person account go here. Anyhow, it is nice to be able to get some quick info as to where and how bad the fires are without relying on rumor and crappy news stories.

Remember, put out your camp fires completely. Sheesh.