The United States Forest Service admitted on Monday that a prescribed burn authorized by the agency caused an extreme wildfire in 2022 in New Mexico.

Forest Service made the admission in a 230-page report published after a long investigation into the Cerro Pelado fire. The fire, which began in April 2022, swept across over 60 square miles and came a few miles short of Los Alamos and a U.S. national security lab.

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Last spring's wildfire swept over the Southwest region, and it was egged on by extreme drought and warm temperatures. In New Mexico, the Cerro Pelado fire burned at least three homes and prompted several evacuations and school closures. The agency said the fire stemmed from a controlled burn that continued to smolder undetected.

“Our investigation has confirmed that the Cerro Pelado Fire on the Jemez Ranger District of the Santa Fe National Forest was caused by a holdover fire from the Pino West Piles Prescribed Fire, a debris pile burn," Forest Service Southwestern Regional Forester Michiko Martin said in a press release. "A holdover fire is a fire that smolders undetectably. In this case, despite being covered by wet snow, this holdover fire remained dormant for considerable time with no visible sign of smoke or heat."

“This investigation adds to the considerable evidence of how severely the Santa Fe National Forest was affected by extreme environmental conditions caused by historic drought in 2022," Martin continued.

Martin said that, due to the outcomes of escaped prescribed fires in 2022, the Forest Service implemented a 90-day halt on prescribed burns. The agency recommended changes to the prescribed fire program that the Southwestern Region now uses, Martin said. Now, firefighters use handheld thermal devices and drones to detect heat to monitor pile burns.

The admission from Forest Service caused backlash from New Mexico lawmakers at the state and federal levels. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) said she was "outraged" over the Forest Service's "negligence that caused this destruction."

"While climate change and extreme drought continue to plague the Southwest, the Forest Service must abandon their business-as-usual approach to prescribed burns and forest management in our state," Grisham said. "I am relieved to hear that the Forest Service will now use technology to prevent this from occurring in the future. We will continue to hold the federal government accountable for each of the disastrous fires they caused in our state last summer."

New Mexico Cabinet Secretary Sarah Cottrell Propst echoed Grisham in a statement, saying that the Forest Service "harmed" New Mexicans and "failed to promptly disclose" the origin of the Cerro Pelado fire.

At the federal level, Congress and the Biden administration have worked to confront and prevent wildfires, allocating more than $4 billion in funding and a billion-dollar cleanup of forests filled with dead trees and undergrowth.

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Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-MN), who serves on the Appropriations subcommittee for environment, blasted the Forest Service for its lengthy investigation.

"The warming climate is making our forests more vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires. That’s a reality that our Forest Service can and must urgently respond to when deciding when and how to do prescribed burns,” Heinrich said in a statement. “We cannot catch up to this reality if it takes nearly a year to even make the findings on the Cerro Pelado Fire public.”