The smoke of what is set to become a thousand-acre forest fire wafted over Kari Martin’s house as she stood in its driveway on Wednesday, just one strip of asphalt away from the blaze. In an unusual turn of events for a resident in an extreme-risk zone for wildfires, she had no reason to evacuate. The fire was according to plan.

“It gives me a little bit of anxiety,” she admitted. “I mean fire is fire, you can only control things like that so well, but I think it’s still good. Fire in the summertime or just living this close to the forest is always a concern.”

Helping assuage her concerns were nearly 150 wildland firefighters, all gathered in an interagency effort to set and monitor perhaps the most ambitious prescribed burn effort yet in the wildland-urban interface between Pike-San Isabel National Forest and populated areas of El Paso County.

The fire, planned to burn up to 350 acres each day from Wednesday through Friday west of Monument, is a stopgap effort to reduce the risk of dangerous unplanned fires in an area that has seen both a build up of ecological fuel sources and nearby residential development. The project is unique so far in its closeness to those residential areas, according to U.S. Forest Service fire prevention technician Dawn Sanchez.

Started midmorning on Wednesday by lines of firefighters in heavy gear with drip torches, the Monument Fire Center prescribed burn had crews parked alongside houses adjoining the national forest property. Local traffic drove feet away from the fire.

“This site was chosen because the urban interface here is so intense,” said Carl Bauer, head of the Pikes Peak Ranger District that encompasses the national forest area within the burn.

Monument Fire District chief Andy Kovacs said that the prescribed burn had been in the planning for months with his agency. Local district firefighters were out with the U.S. Forest Service, as were members of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office wildland fire unit.

The fire caught fast but stayed low, skating along patches of dry grass and the occasional Gambel oak cluster that radiated heat and random bursts of flame into the growing haze. Tall standing pine rows of the defunct tree nursery area mostly stayed intact, their lowest branches above the highest flames.

Bauer said that set of conditions was exactly what the forest service was hoping to see. In an agency paradigm shift from its century-long mission of suppressing all fires, the U.S. Forest Service has recently begun to recognize the importance of periodic fire activity to prevent the build up of fuel that can start the massive, uncontrollable fires that have plagued the western United States.

In the case of the Monument Fire Center, Bauer said that the prescribed burn was addressing ecological damage caused by a human-caused fire 30 years ago.

During the Berry Fire in 1989 on Mount Herman, an unattended campfire caused an intense blaze that destroyed hundreds of acres of Ponderosa Pines leaving a burn scar that is still visible along the side facing Monument. In place of the pines, bush-like Gambel oaks, a “pioneer species,” moved in to the scorched area. Oaks have far less fire-resistance than pine and produce even more fuel for a future forest fire.

Bauer said that without action, the area would have been susceptible to an uncontrolled fire with flames that reach into tree canopies, causing damage to the ecosystem.

“That’s an intense fire that is unnatural,” he said. “It’s damaging to the soil, and it’s almost impossible to fight with the resources that we have.”

Many areas within the wildland-urban interface in El Paso County are at similar risk of a devastating fire, but very few have been prepped like the Monument Fire Center for a safe prescribed burn. The fire on Wednesday was possible through a phase of more environmentally impactful and costly mechanical removal of fuel called “mastication” in 2022.

Mastication is achieved by removing brush and low limbs without fire. The Monument Fire Center that remains now looks different from surrounding areas, with only two to three growing seasons of underbrush to burn.

“There’s no way I would contemplate putting a prescribed fire into this area without masticating it first,” said Bauer.

He said that only a “small percentage” of his 230,000-acre district had been similarly treated.

Regardless, a future in which prescribed burns like the one started Wednesday are a “very serious but more routine” occurrence is the ultimate goal for the U.S. Forest Service in the area, said Bauer. Another prescribed burn will likely be set at the Monument Fire Center in the next few years, burning parts left by the mosaic pattern of the first low-intensity fire.

By Wednesday evening, the prescribed burn had covered 309 acres. White smoke is visible across the region drifting up and out. At the epicenter and the fire line, Martin said she was conflicted about living so close to the reality of wildfire.

“It’s a Catch-22,” she said. “We are very blessed to live in an amazing spot, but every summer and every time it’s dry out, it’s something we have to think about as a household, and it’s always something that’s in the back of our mind.”