When lightning struck a lone piñon pine tree below the Mancos Overlook last Saturday, Mancos fire crews managed to quickly dowse the flames. Little did they know that the same area would reportedly reignite and start a wildlands fire that would rip through 1,500 acres of private, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service land on Thursday.

By Friday, hundreds of firefighters had been dispatched to the site and a Type II Rocky Mountain region incident-management team began coordinating firefighters and resources from regional public-land agencies and counties.

As of Friday afternoon, fire officials estimated that 1,600 acres had been burned, which included 400 acres within Mesa Verde National Park, 800 private acres, and 400 acres of BLM land.

"Today is the day we’re in transition mode," said Justin Dombrowski, a wildland-fire-management officer.

High area temperatures, low humidities, and dry conditions are feeding the fire, with little relief in sight. None of the fire is contained, and officials said they would have to rely on both natural and man-made forces to stop it. "We will be relying on topographical and natural as well as human-made firebreaks," said Will Morris, spokesman for Mesa Verde National Park.

The firebreaks include Highway 160 from the north, western and southern escarpments, and the Mancos River on the east.

Morris said that computers are estimating that the fire could cost as much as $1.2 million to put out.

For most of Friday, ground crews settled in at the San Juan Basin Technical College for further instructions while air crews surveyed and attacked the fire from above. Fire headquarters were transferred to the Montezuma County fairgrounds later Friday evening.

Trail crews at the Mancos overlook spotted the lightning-sparked fire on Thursday afternoon and reported it to the park service and Mancos fire department. The fire ripped through Mancos Valley agricultural fields and hit piñon juniper forest up the mesa to the northeastern boundary of Mesa Verde National Park.

"When the fire hit the tree line it sounded like a jet engine taking off," said Blake Mitchell, a Mancos fire captain that first responded to the fire. On Thursday the blaze moved southeasterly and began to crown from low sagebrush to the forest within a few hours.

Hundreds of park visitors and several private homes were evacuated on Friday.

Five air tankers and small aircraft were surveying and dropping slurry on the fire on Friday. The red slurry is a mixture of phosophorous and water that is colored so ground crews can see it falling. Morris said that the initial slurry drops on Thursday were unsuccessful because of the difficult terrain and wind conditions.

No physical structures in the park have been threatened, but park officials are concerned about preserving the integrity of both archaeological and natural resources.

Linda Towle, chief of research and resource management at Mesa Verde, said that the burning area of the park is a wilderness area and has not been surveyed for ancient Puebloan archaeological sites.

"If they (the archeological sites) are fairly well buried the fire itself will probably do minimal damage," said Towle. She said the biggest concern is if the fire erodes subsurface sites and exposes them to the heat. Damage can also be done by firefighting crews, so 13 area archaeologists with fire training have been sent with crews to help them dig lines around the fire without doing damage.

Towle said that the fire has already uncovered new sites. "We’ll have more sites when this fire is over," she said.

Because of archaeological considerations, Mesa Verde does not allow the use of bulldozers to fight fires, so ground crews will have to dig a line around the fire to contain it.

In 1996, the Chapin 5 Fire burned close to 4,000 acres of the park, burning and uncovering more than 300 archaeological sites, and damaging a major rock-art panel. The Bircher fire has not threatened or burned any of the major archaeological sites in the park.

George San Miguel, Mesa Verde natural resource manager, said that the greatest impact from the fire would be to sensitive piñon-juniper woodlands that could take several hundred years to regrow. Ponderosa-pine and cottonwood trees are also threatened.

"On steep slopes like this, when the vegetation has been consumed, there is bound to be erosion," he said. "In addition to that we expect there to be a need for reseeding of native grasses."

The erosion could threaten fish habitat, and change wildlife habitat from woodlands to grasslands.