SALIDA — Weather and Fire Behavior: Additional snow and below freezing temperatures have continued to impact the Decker Fire.

No fire spread is expected to occur due to this weather and lack of fire behavior.

As the area continues to receive precipitation, fuel moisture is steadily increasing. This wet and unseasonably cool weather is predicted to persist. However, large and heavy fuels remain dry enough to retain heat, even below the snowpack.

Current Situation: The weather conditions from the snow impact and freezing temperatures have delayed many crews and equipment from traveling.

Firefighters are being demobilized when it is safe to do so. Those that remain continue to work on taking care of the logistical concerns, to minimize the Incident Management Team’s impact on the local community. Safety of all public and firefighters remains the number one priority.

Questions continue on the status of containment of the Decker Fire. Due to the remote and rugged access to some areas of the fire, firefighters could only safely access 62% of the fire perimeter during peak activity. All (100%) of that 62% has been contained. This means firefighters have physically set foot on those firelines to declare those portions of line contained.

When looking at the fire map, this is displayed by the black line around a portion of the perimeter.

The brown line around the fire map are the areas crews could not access safely. This brown line will be contained naturally in a season-ending event, which is currently happening with the snow the area is receiving.

At this time with the current weather conditions, all areas of the fire remain inaccessible due to snow.

Therefore, fire managers are unable to confidently claim that the entire fire perimeter (including the brown lines) is completely contained.

The areas with brown lines will be monitored by the local fire crews throughout the winter, though the moisture from the snowpack will eventually put the fire completely out.

Conditions allowing, remaining crews will work to complete suppression repair tasks over the coming days in the areas that will be accessible.

Closures and Public Safety: San Isabel Forest closures: https://tinyurl.com/SanIsabelClosures. Rio Grande Forest closures: https://tinyurl.com/RioGrandeClosures. BLM closures: Facebook @BLMColoradoFire and https://tinyurl.com/BLMClosure.

Please respect closures.

For questions on the fire, please contact the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office at719-539-2596 or the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office at 719-276-5555 or go to the Chaffee County Sheriff or Fremont County Sheriff Facebook pages and websites.