Kirtland Air Force Base will start clearing out vegetation through prescribed burns Jan. 29 and will continue through Feb. 5 near the Juan Tabo Hills and Four Hills Village areas.
The base has been conducting prescribed burns since 2018 to reduce the chances of wildfire in wildfire-prone areas. Robert Smith, media and environmental chief for the base’s public affairs office, said this schedule gives the fire crews a chance to manage the prescribed burns to minimize the smoke impact on the communities.
“We need a certain temperature, we need certain wind direction and we need certain wind speeds to all be within a certain window for us to do those things,” Smith said. “We don’t want to do it when the wind is going to be lower, blowing directly at [the communities]. We want it going the other way, back onto Kirtland.”
The crews will start early in the morning and end the burns in the afternoon so there is more ventilation and divide treatment areas into smaller units to limit the smoke impact, but smoke will still be visible to Albuquerque residents.