Last Chance Fire

201153,445 acresNew Mexico

The Last Chance Fire burned 53,445 acres, about 84 square miles, across Eddy County. It began on April 24, 2011.

Watch how it happened

Last Chance Fire · 2011

How it happened

Watch it burn in the order satellites saw it, coloured by how severely each place burned.

About this replay

Date (UTC)—Historical replay

Burned so far—acres

High severity—of the area so far

Detections205satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

Burn severityHigh, Moderate, Low, Unburned to low, Increased greenness

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Washington, D.C., to scale61 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (205 MODIS) inside the final perimeter; each place takes the time of its nearest detection, so the order is satellite-observed but interpolated between passes, roughly every 12 hours. Severity: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS, U.S. Forest Service), mapped from Landsat after the fire.

How severely it burned

Burn severity inside the final perimeter, classified from Landsat images taken before and after the fire.

Map of burn severity across the Last Chance Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	8.8%	4,688
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	51%	27,291
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	25%	13,346
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	15%	8,116

9% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 4,688 acres; 60% burned at moderate or high severity.

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (U.S. Geological Survey and USDA Forest Service). Classes come from the change in a Landsat burn index (dNBR) between images before and after the fire; acres are each class’s share of the fire’s mapped area.

Where it burned

Acres inside each county, measured from the satellite-mapped perimeter.

Acres burned by county

Eddy County	NM	53,486

Other large fires in New Mexico in 2011

Wallow Fire563,564 acres
Las Conchas Fire150,816 acres
Frying Pan Ranch Fire106,264 acres
Donaldson Fire103,242 acres
Miller Fire84,897 acres
Enterprise Fire77,348 acres
Tire Fire44,930 acres
Cloverdale2 Fire33,555 acres

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS and U.S. Forest Service). Type recorded: Wildfire.