The people in the town of Raton, N.M., know that a wildfire’s effects don’t end when the last smoldering ember is extinguished.
The “Track Fire” originated June 12 on the northern outskirts of Raton and quickly got out of control. It eventually burned almost 27,800 acres, thousands of trees and much of the ground-cover vegetation of the watershed around Lake Maloya in Sugarite Canyon, which straddles the New Mexico-Colorado border.