For the past few weeks, Rapid City's been covered with a haze of smoke. What's usually evidence of a wildfire is actually a sign of future fire prevention. For two weeks now, plumes of smoke have filled the skies over the Black Hills and flames have covered the forest floor. "We've burned about 2,000 acres of flammable forest next to private lands and people's homes to improve and reduce the fire danger," Dave Thom says. Over the past 8 years, uncontrolled wildfires have burned 180,000 acres of the Black Hills National Forest. Fire crews do prescribed burns every year to get rid of dangerous ground fuels that can help those wildfires spread quickly to homes and other structures. "So that the fire will stay on the ground where firefighters can more easily put the...
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