People are still on edge more than a week after the Rio Grande Fire sparked in the bosque and jumped to a nearby Bosque Farms neighborhood. Friday was the first Red Flag Day since the fire took off in Valencia County last Thursday, the memory of it and the damage still fresh.

Valencia County Fire Chief Matt Propp said it’s been an extremely busy year so far, and it sets the tone for what the rest of the season could be like. He said they’ve handled more fires in the last two months than they did all last year.

“This year we’ve actually seen a lot more big fires on days that we actually consider good burns,” he said.

The Rio Grande Fire ended up burning nearly 60 acres. New Mexico State Forestry is keeping an eye on the area.

“What we’ve seen is we’ll have a fire three, five, seven days earlier by all appearances it’s out and everything looks good and we’ll have a Red Flag Day with high winds and it will reignite an ember that’s deep into a burn pile kicks up an ember and next thing you know we’re dealing with another big fire,” said Propp.

David Morgan has lived on Todd Lane in Bosque Farms for forty years. It’s a peaceful street, but Morgan said he’s always lived in fear of a fire. That fear came true last week.

“It melted the whole back end of the trailer, this aluminum trailer, burnt the tires off the swather,” he said.

He showed us what’s left of his two barns, shed, and farming equipment. Just the frames remain of his side-by-side and hay baler. The tin roof of the barn is on the ground on top of other burned-out farm equipment. Morgan stayed home while his wife evacuated with their dog. He had hoses set up around his house just in case, but they didn’t do much.

“They grabbed the wrong hose, and it was an irrigation hose so it had holes in it, so it didn’t have any pressure,” he said.

He knows it could have been worse. His neighbor’s house across the street is still standing but destroyed. Another house around the corner is a pile of rubble, already demolished.

“Once those winds came up it was toast,” said Morgan.

But Morgan gets emotional talking about what they lost. Including his wife’s mother’s Christmas decorations that were in the shed.

“Fire just takes everything,” he said.

Morgan does not plan to head out of town at all this summer, afraid another fire will spark. Valencia County is currently under a 60-day burn ban. Chief Propp wanted to remind people to create defensible space around their properties and to be alert especially on windy days.