BY MAIRE O’NEILL
maire@losalamosreporter.com

The big news from the Cerro Pelado fire Saturday morning is that containment is now at 23 percent.

“We continue to expect fire behavior to moderate as it runs into the old burn areas and is running out of fuel, and hitting the rocks in the south,” said Great Basin #1 Incident Command Team PIO Mary Cernicek.

There’s still some potential for it to give us some smoke and some flames and for it to be really erratic. They still have some short range spotting up to half a mile and that can cause problems which can cause problems, especially if it was to spot over the containment line, Cernicek said.

“So you still need a lot of eyes on the fire working the edges as the ignition rate is right at 98-100 percent, so if there’s heat and fuel it will burn so that’s still not a great position to be in,” she said. “Fire officials are feeling pretty good about the position, however. The night operations were able to control the line. During the day yesterday, they had one spot that jumped the uncontained area but they were able to get on it right away”.

Watch the Los Alamos Reporter for photos taken Friday in the fire area during an escorted visit,