После лесных пожаров в Нью-Мексико прогнозируют опасные паводки из-за изменения свойств почвы

The first day Steve Vigil saw plumes of smoke billowing over the western Sangre de Cristo Mountains from Cundiyó, his mind immediately turned to another scary thought. The aftermath. “For me, my backyard is on fire,” Vigil said. “It’s devastating to see and to realize next time I finally go up there, it’s never going to be the same.” Below it might not, either. Burning in what has been described as steep and hard-to-reach terrain, the lightning-caused Frijoles Fire is scorching the forest around the Rio Frijoles and closing in on the Rio Medio, two tributaries that flow into Santa Cruz Lake — a critical water supply for the medley of historic farming communities in the shadow of the now smoky mountains. Fire crews, with the help of rainstorms, made strides last week in containing the blaze. While New Mexicans have been longing for more rain, too much could wreak havoc on the Frijoles Fire burn scar and downriver communities. The growing burn scar is stirring concerns of potential flash flooding, which other fire-ravaged communities across the state continue to confront, especially with forecasts of a “resurgence” of monsoon rains in September after a hot, dry summer, a winter with extremely low snowpack and increasing drought conditions. Most of Santa Fe County, including the area of the fire, was in “exceptional” drought conditions — the highest level of severity — last week, according to a U.S. Drought Monitor update Thursday. The Frijoles Fire, undergoing a full-suppression firefighting effort by about 1,000 people, was reported at 15,252 acres Wednesday morning (Aug. 26). Fifty-five percent of its over 40-mile perimeter had been contained, particularly on its western edge, near Cundiyó and other centuries-old communities in northeastern Santa Fe County and southeastern Rio Arriba County. Risk to irrigation supply Hydrologist Steve Finch said the biggest risks from the Frijoles Fire, which ignited Aug. 4, are high sediment loads and debris flows traveling down the Rio Medio, which accounts for nearly half of the water in Santa Cruz Lake. Finch, who has worked in the area for 25 years or more, including for the Santa Cruz Irrigation District, which owns the Santa Cruz Dam and stewards the lake water, noted an assessment will be required to determine the intensity of the fire. But he warned the lake’s agricultural water could be in jeopardy. “The sad thing will be if we get a high, big, giant debris flow and sediment; it’s just going to fill [the lake] up with sediment and floating logs,” he said. “You’ll see sediment and logs and a foot of water. It will not be a reservoir as it was anymore.” Finch noted intense rainstorms often follow fires in New Mexico, limiting time for mitigation measures. “The big impact will be the reservoir because then they don’t have any water for storage, and they can’t irrigate a full season” or even part of the season, he said, referring to acequia users from Chimayó to La Mesilla. “If the reservoir is not operational [during a dry] a year like this, they wouldn’t be growing anything,” Finch added. “Orchards will die.” U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat who grew up in nearby Nambé, said he’s “hopeful and prayerful” the fire will soon be fully contained. “The last time there was a fire near there, which was all of Nambé Pueblo above [Nambé] Lake, it took years for all those waterways to begin to recover,” he said. “Nambé Lake itself filled up with soot to everything else that was running,” he added. “… What we’ve learned in other parts of the state and also in the Nambé area is after a fire that burns so hot, it kills the soil — and when the water runs on it, it’s like a hard surface. There’s no soil or grass to slow down the water.” Water quality concerns Ron Gallegos, chair of the Santa Cruz Irrigation District, said there are between 28 and 30 acequias and close to 3,000 parciantes, or water rights holders, who use the lake water for everything from watering their gardens and orchards to keeping their lawns green and livestock hydrated. Gallegos said the dam is structurally sound; water quality is his biggest concern. “The dam integrity is not what I’m worried about. It’s the content that flows into it,” he said. Still, Gallegos said he has a gut feeling the aftermath of the fire won’t be crushing. “It’s not going to be that bad because — I don’t know, I just don’t,” he said. “I don’t have that feeling.” Water quality, he said, has been an ongoing concern even before the fire. “We’re always worried about it,” he said. “It’s just like the algae. That’s been a main concern for the last few years, and once it gets to too high of a level, then we have to shut down. Thankfully, we haven’t.” Gallegos, a football coach at McCurdy Charter School, said he’s facing the future with the same advice he gives his players. “Hope for the best, but expect the worst,” he said. “Hopefully, the hope comes in first.” Still, Gallegos acknowledged a heavy monsoon could be problematic. The soil in the area where the fire burned “is loose, loose, loose, and any type of moisture, good amount of moisture, even 1 inch in an hour, is gonna send it flying,” he said. “It will disrupt from the Rio Frijoles to the Medio.” What meteorologists say Jennifer Shoemake, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, said September “might bring some better chances for rainfall” across New Mexico. “I don’t know the burn severity [of the Frijoles Fire] as of yet … but in high burn severity areas, what typically happens is the soil in those areas become what’s called hydrophobic, so it’s kind of like it’s afraid of water,” she said. “So, water that would normally seep into the ground will not,” Shoemake explained. “In fact, it’ll just run off. So, the same amount of rain that would occur over normal healthy soils would cause a flash flood over these burned areas. If they do get some heavy rainfall, certainly some flash flooding would be possible.” Andrew Mangham, a senior service hydrologist at the National Weather Service, also in Albuquerque, echoed similar concerns. “The Frijoles River is the one that we are most concerned about in terms of affecting people and property because it’s coming out of a very steep canyon that is in that fire,” he said. “There’s a pretty good elevation drop from the headwaters of the Rio Frijoles down to Cundiyó, so we are concerned about the homes along that river.” Mangham noted dams in other regions of the state affected by wildfire have been hit with debris flows that have clogged or damaged the structure and caused water to overflow. “It is a little hard to predict what could happen,” he said. “It’s not a big canyon, so you need to have a storm hit it just right. But we’ve seen that happen over and over again in other parts of the state where it just takes one storm in the wrong location.” Mangham also said the intensity or severity of the fire is an important factor to consider. “It’s hard for me to give you any hard numbers about what it might take in terms of rainfall rates and amounts to cause bad flooding, but we have seen some pretty fierce storms this summer when we have seen storms over the area,” he said. “If it gets hit with a pretty common monsoon storm, it is very easy to imagine that you would get debris flow, which is a combination of ash and mud and rocks and trees coming out of that canyon where it’s been burned, and sending some pretty devastating flows down the Rio Frijoles towards the town,” Mangham added. Mitigation, recovery District 5 State Sen. Leo Jaramillo, an Española Democrat, also said the threat of flooding is among his biggest concerns. “With so much vegetation burned away, even a relatively short, heavy rain can send water, ash and debris down our mountains and into our communities below,” he said. “We need to be preparing now to protect homes, roads, acequias and our watersheds because the danger doesn’t end when the fire is out.” Jaramillo advocated for mitigation measures as early as possible, from reinforcing drainage systems and acequias to putting flood protections in place. “The key is doing that work now before the heavy rains come,” he said. Jaramillo said the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are “home” for Northern New Mexicans. “They hold our history, our traditions and generations of memories,” he said. “Seeing them burn is watching a piece of who we are forever changed. It’s heartbreaking.” Eddie Garcia, a spokesperson with California Complex Incident Management Team 8, which is handling the firefighting operations, said recovery plans for the Frijoles Fire area have been part of the mix since Day 1. He cited a “resource adviser,” or READ, plan that seeks to protect natural, cultural and tribal resources, and the Burned Area Emergency Response, or BAER program, which aims to minimize threats to life or property as a result of a fire. “Fire and all of our equipment, it does cause some damage, and we’re thoughtful of it,” he said. “We’re thoughtful of the watersheds. We’re thoughtful of cultural heritage spots. We’re thoughtful of the trees and the natural landscapes, and so we have all kinds of scientists and professionals that work under those two programs that we deploy, and we use their expertise to help return the land to the people in the best shape possible moving forward.” Understanding dangers Mangham advised area residents to heed warnings. “People need to understand how dangerous this can be because this can take a storm that would normally not cause any response in the river and turn it into a complete disaster,” he said. Mangham cited Ruidoso as an example, saying “pretty common storms” that dropped an inch or so of rain in an hour produced massive flows of mud and debris that swept homes off their foundations. “Same with Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon,” he said, referring to the largest and most destructive wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history, on the eastern side the Sangre de Cristo range. “People are just caught off guard because they’re used to living up there. They’re used to the weather. They’re used to how the mountains behave. They know it very, very well,” he said. “But the burn has really changed the soils and changed the behavior of the mountains when it’s faced by a storm,” he added, “so the response is much worse and much faster than anyone is imagining.” This story first appeared in The Santa Fe New Mexican, the sister publication of the Taos News.