Smoke from the South Fork and Salt fires blots out the sun Tuesday along NM Highway 70 outside of Tilley, NM. (Photo by Danielle Prokop / Source NM)
Officials from many agencies responding to the unfolding natural disaster in southeast New Mexico have said an investigation is ongoing about the cause of the South Fork and Salt fires, including whether the blazes were caused by a human or nature.
“When we got here we were told it was human-caused; we were also told it was lightning, but those sources were unconfirmed, not official,” said Dave Shell, a spokesperson for the incident command team handling the fires since yesterday.
Still, publicly available information – including records approved by the incident commanders of both fires and lightning strike data provided to Source New Mexico – sheds new light on potential causes of the blazes, which have so far destroyed or damaged 1,400 structures and taken two lives.
Records from the Alamogordo Interagency Dispatch Center show a cluster of confirmed fire starts on June 16, 17 and 18. Among the cluster are two fire starts that incident commanders have listed as the ignition points of what became the deadly Salt and South Fork fires on June 17.
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Officials in charge of the fire did not answer questions as to whether investigators are looking into the cluster of fire starts detected by the Alamogordo dispatch center as part of their search for the fires’ causes.
Additionally, incident commanders in daily update reports – known as ICS 209s – have listed “human” as the cause for both fires.
However, Lessa Peter, a spokesperson for the fire response team, told Source New Mexico on Thursday afternoon that the cause listed as “human” is an error. It’s a result, she said, of an automated system incorrectly converting text entered as “undetermined” to “human.”
The fire’s cause is still very much under investigation, Peter and other officials stressed Thursday, including an initial determination about whether it was human-caused or natural. If it is human-caused, an investigation could take months or longer. The fires are still 0% contained.
The cause listed as “human” appears on the forms for both fires, two days in a row, according to a Source NM review. Other options available to include on those forms include “Undetermined,” and “Natural/Lightning,” according to the March 2023 user manual produced by the National Interagency Fire Center.
Incident commanders have also listed the cause being “human” in daily summaries provided by the Southwest Coordination Center since the South Fork and Salt fires started. That’s a case of the original error from the ICS 209 forms being repeated, Peter said.
Few lightning strikes in area
While there is no determination whether the fire was caused by human activity, data provided to Source NM shows there were few lightning strikes in the area in the days before the fire began.
There were about 100 lightning strikes in June in the area of the fires before the fires began, records show. However, the closest ones to the ignition sites struck the ground on June 7, 10 days before the fires started.
Those 16 strikes on June 7 were a mile or more from the ignition sites, according to data provided to Source New Mexico by Vaisala XWeather, a private company that uses sensors and proprietary technology to detect lightning strikes.
The company says its technology can detect cloud-to-ground lightning strikes within 100 meters of where the bolt struck earth, as well as determine the electrical power and how many pulses were in each bolt. The National Weather Service contracts with the company for its own lightning strike analyses in the Wisconsin service area.
Investigation ongoing
State officials with the governor’s office, State Forestry and the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management did not immediately answer a list of detailed questions Thursday.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham at a news conference this week cautioned the public against speculating on the fires’ causes as the disaster unfolds. She also said there had been reports of lightning in the area, stressing that much is still unknown about the fires’ origins.
Officials did not respond to a request for more details on the strikes she was referring to.
State officials said a team of six investigators, overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, is working diligently to determine the causes of the fires.
The fires were first detected on June 17 on the northeast corner of the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and high winds and dry conditions carried both quickly to the village of Ruidoso and the city of Ruidoso Downs, which are both under evacuation orders.
The fires, though covering an area of only about 35 square miles, are already among the most destructive in New Mexico’s history, in terms of structures damaged or destroyed, the governor has said.
The Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire in 2022, for example, was more than 10 times the size in terms of area burned but damaged or destroyed fewer structures: about 1,000 compared with the 1,400 impacted this week.
Two people have died, according to New Mexico State Police, and rain that fell in the area yesterday caused floods that required at least two swiftwater rescues and untold additional damage.
Additional fire starts
Dispatch records show fire crews responded to fire starts between June 16 and June 18, including the two that became Salt and South Fork Fires, in a roughly 20-square-mile area in the Mescalero Apache Reservation.
The first fire in that cluster was on June 16 at 7:44 p.m. and was deemed the Trails Fire. Dispatcher notes say “fire out,” suggesting it was extinguished or out by the time resources arrived.
The next day, on June 17, dispatchers detected four other fires in the area, including the South Fork Fire at 7:08 a.m. Then three others were detected progressively south of there, beginning with the Carrizo Fire at 8:08 a.m. about five miles south.
At 12:43 p.m., about 2 miles southwest of the Carrizo Fire, the Penn Scott Fire was reported. Finally, at 2:20 p.m., the Salt Fire was detected about 2.3 miles east of the Penn Scott Fire.
The next day, June 18, at 10:49 a.m., the 244 Penn Scott Fire was detected, according to dispatch logs. Apart from the Salt and South Fork Fires, all the fires are listed as less than an acre in size.
All of those fires, according to Source New Mexico review of satellite imagery, appear to have started within 100 feet of trails or roads.
Dispatchers also detected two fires nearby the afternoon of June 14: The Chico Canyon Fire about 2 miles south of the Salt Fire ignition site, and the Snowflake Ridge Fire about 4 miles northeast of the South Fork ignition site.
The Snowflake Ridge Fire occurred within 670 feet of a lightning strike that occurred that same day, according to Vaisala data provided to Source New Mexico. Two lightning strikes June 7 occurred a mile or so from the Chico Canyon Fire, according to the data.
Vaisala detected 260 lightning strikes so far this month in a roughly 400-square mile area, per Source New Mexico’s request – an area that more than covers the perimeters of both fires and stretches from the Sierra Blanca Peak in the northwest to 10 miles east of the edge of the Lincoln National Forest
The company detected about 100 strikes that lightning struck June 7, June 12, June 14 and June 15. Apart from the 16 strikes June 7, the rest of the strikes before the fires began hit far east of the ignition sites.
Another 160 or so lightning strikes were detected June 19, the day when 2 to 4 inches of rain fell on fire that was fully underway, adding the risk of lightning to an area already beleaguered by fire and water.
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