Steady progress corralling New Mexico's largest ever forest fire allowed some evacuees to return home on Monday even as officials in Utah investigated an air tanker crash that caused the first two deaths among crews fighting wildfires this year.
The airplane, a Lockheed Martin P2V, went down on Sunday afternoon in the Hamlin Valley area of southwestern Utah while on a mission to drop chemical fire retardant on an 8,000-acre (3,237-hectare) blaze along the Nevada-Utah border.
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Elk stand in Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire's haze. [Photo Credit: US Forest Service Gila National Forest, Brandon Oberhardt]
The Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire has burned 259,025 acres and is 20% contained, according to today's briefing. Fire behavior was dampened earlier in the day by an inversion over the fire.
A Forest Service Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team is on the ground now for an assessment of the Whitewater-Baldy Complex burn area. The BAER team includes hydrologists, soil scientists, engineers, biologists, silviculturists, range conservationists and archeologists who will evaluate the burned area and prescribe management actions that will protect the land quickly and effectively.
A number of local and state emergency managers have also come together to support locally driven community-based efforts and to initiate mitigation measures that will minimize damage from post-fire floods.
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