Area fires contained, haze will continue

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Photo courtesy Greg Sloan There is one thing that smoke is good for — beautiful sunsets, such as this one taken a week ago this evening. While much of the haze in the area is from the numerous fires in the northwestern United States, Archuleta County experienced a small taste of this year’s epic wildfire season recently. Photo courtesy Greg Sloan
There is one thing that smoke is good for — beautiful sunsets, such as this one taken a week ago this evening. While much of the haze in the area is from the numerous fires in the northwestern United States, Archuleta County experienced a small taste of this year’s epic wildfire season recently.[/caption]

While much of the haze in the area is from the numerous fires in the northwestern United States, Archuleta County got a (luckily) small taste of this year’s epic wildfire season recently.

Only one fire burned within Archuleta County, but local fire officials also kept an eye on a northern New Mexico fire that showed potential of crossing the state line.

The Little Devil Fire was started by lightning on Aug. 18 and burned a total of 48 acres (earlier updates of larger acreage were revised after more accurate mapping operations took place). It burned near Devil Creek and the Devil Creek State Wildlife Area on U.S. Forest Service land west of Pagosa Springs.

During the fire’s peak days, several aircraft joined ground crews to contain the fire, which burned in very rugged terrain that made suppression efforts difficult.

The fire was fully controlled on Aug. 25 and is no longer receiving USFS attention, said fire spokesperson Jodi Mallozzi, who works in fire prevention and education for the Forest Service. All resources that were called in to help with the fire have been demobilized from the incident and made available able to tend to other fires.

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