ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Forest officials have already been busy with some proactive operations this winter. We’re talking about all the pile burns that have been ongoing in the Santa National Forest. 

KOB 4 spoke with two of the people who help plan and monitor those burns, and they gave an update on how the winter prescribed burns are going. 

“I think there’s a misnomer out there with the public that we just kind of like, lick our finger and say, Well, today’s a good day, you know, and that’s just not the case, we’re really looking at the best science available,” said SFNF Fire Staff Officer Terrance Gallegos. 

Gallegos has been working with fire for over 20 years. He and Dennis Carril are a few of the people overseeing prescribed burns in the Santa Fe National Forest. 

“It’s still an ongoing count, you know, rough count right now. We’re probably over, you know, say 1,000 acres of pile burns. It fluctuates year to year,” said Carril. 

Carrill says the pile burn conditions have been favorable all winter season because of the heavy snow pack. But, with a forest over 1.2 million acres in size, it’s hard to prioritize where to burn. 

“We want to make sure we’re going for the right acres and not just for quantity out in the middle of no where, ‘Hey, we got 5,000 acres burned but what community did you protect? What watershed did you protect?’ So it’s balancing that quality over quantity?” Carril said. 

Gallegos says they’ll be phasing out pile burns soon this season. Instead, they’ll use infrared technology to maker sure no fires are left dormant. 

“Being able to fly in an aircraft over a fire and identify where the heat sources are is obviously a big advantage. Back in the day, you just had to grid it, you know, you had to walk it, you have to put your hands in it, you had to feel it,” said Gallegos.

He says crews also have a hand-held version of the technology they use on the ground. 

Adding a combination of ground and air crews plus the technology gives them all the resources to monitor fires. 

Carril says after the Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak Fire, the Forest Service has been working on repairing its relationship with the community.

“There’s a lot of nuances, infinite variability in how to manage something like fire. So I think the attention scrutiny or not it’s something we need,” said Carril. 

Both say now that the weather is getting warmer and drier, prescription perimeters will change again to reflect that as they start getting into larger scale broadcast burns.