Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Never forget fires of the past

For every people there are those events that mark the past. Any person who decides to continue farming or ranching, year after year, forgets the middling inconveniences, for both sanity and space. You’ll need that room to remember where all the trailers are parked and what you need to do with those steers. There are more things on the minds of those folks than they can probably fit.

So, what do we remember?

Well, there’s at least one thing that’s burned into a few brains around here, including mine. It was the great battle of a war that had many in this area. It was a sweeping wildfire of destruction that cut through counties and laid the ground bare and hostile. As is the custom when it comes to the more impressive of natural destructive entities, it was given a name, and it’s a name that we won’t forget.

Tire Fire.

Sparks from a tire blowout near Melrose caused the April 17, 2011, fire. Officials said it burned about 71,000 acres, destroyed three homes, killed dozens of livestock and sent three firefighters to the hospital.

I’d never seen the like — and would like it if I never see it again. It burned so hot that decades of tough, scrubby, prairie vegetation was consumed so well that it was like it had never been there. When there was anything left, it was the sharp, recently fire-hardened roots of the skunk-berry bushes.

There were black holes where yucca plants had been, their thick root bulbs burnt out from underneath the sand. Lines of barbed wires fell to the ground as the wooden posts that had held them for generations disappeared and left only blackened pits.

We live here, where it is hot and dry and windy. Things catch fire, that’ll never not be something to have to deal with. Most of the fires have been forgotten. There are too many in both the past and the future of those who live and work out in that dry land.

Not this one.

There are plenty of features why it stands tall. It was hot, fast, high, and left the landscape barren for much longer and over many more miles than other fires we’d seen. But, I think, those are not the essential metric that made it an event.

Many fires have been fought. Putting them out is difficult and dangerous. But even the worst are just a big problem, still not a proper event. Those are luckily few.

It was a day to remember, because the battle of Tire Fire felt like a war we might not win.

Audra Brown forgets many things, but not that day. Contact her at: [email protected]