Wildfire Wednesdays #146: Resources for Members and Leaders

Happy Wednesday, FAC NM family!

Today’s short and sweet Wildfire Wednesday focuses on two upcoming opportunities for Network Leaders and Members. As we wind down from wildfire season and transition into reflection and preparation for making our communities more fire prepared in 2025, we invite you to consider taking advantage of these opportunities to connect with others in the Network and to secure funding to kick off or advance your fire readiness work. If you are not yet a Member or Leader but would like to become one to be eligible for these opportunities, please consider joining the network today!

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Be well,
Rachel

Autumn 2024 Microgrants

Looking to fund your community fire preparedness event?
Apply for a FAC NM Microgrant!

Applications are now open!

Click on the image to learn more about microgrant eligibility, preferred events, and more!

FAC NM Leaders and Members are eligible to apply for grants awards of up to $2,000 to provide financial assistance for:

  • convening wildfire preparedness events,

  • enabling on-the-ground community fire risk mitigation work,

  • developing grant proposals for the sustainable longevity of their Fire Adapted Community endeavor, or

  • other events or efforts related to community wildfire adaptation.

Round 4 of funding is open!

Applications will be accepted October 30 - December 15.
Successful applicants will be notified of their award by early January 2025.

Click the buttons below to apply for a microgrant and/or join the network to be eligible for funding.

Bi-monthly Connection Call

Join us on November 26, 2024!

Are you a Member or Leader within the FAC NM Network? One perk of membership is access to a bi-monthly open floor connection call with other members and leaders throughout New Mexico, held on Zoom and facilitated by a Network Coordinator. These meetings provide a time for members to learn from one another, share what they are working on, ask questions of the Network Coordinator and each other, and dive into specific fire adapted topics and upcoming events. This is a time for networking and learning.

Our next FAC NM bi-monthly members and leaders connection call will be held on Tuesday, November 26, 2024 from 12:00-1:00pm MST. During this call, we will be discussing the microgrants program, including previously funded projects, ideas for the current round of funding, and addressing questions or concerns about applying. We will also have time for a round robin where attendees can share updates, goals, and assistance requests. Come prepared to share!

Please save the date - a calendar invitation will be sent to all Leaders and Members shortly! To receive an invitation to attend the connection call, please join the network now!

In the News

The cost of retrofitting a home for wildfire resistance

Click on the image to download the full report.

“A growing body of research has shown that a new focus on wildfire resistance in the built environment—in our homes, buildings, and other infrastructure—could substantially reduce the risks facing communities in wildfire-prone areas. Many developers are already beginning to incorporate materials and methods into new homes to meet the wildfire challenge without a significant impact on building costs. However, how do we upgrade millions of existing homes that are currently in wildfire-prone areas?

“Headwaters Economics examined the costs for improving the structure and design of existing homes to increase their wildfire resistance... The results are detailed in a report, ‘Retrofitting a Home for Wildfire Resistance,’ and show that some of the most effective strategies to reduce the vulnerability of homes and neighborhoods to wildfire can be done affordably.”

Key takeaways:

  • Simple and effective retrofitting costs between $2,000-$15,000 for actions such as installing flame- and ember-resistant vents, placing metal flashing along a deck, keeping gutters clean, or using noncombustible mulch in the yard.

  • A full retrofit to the highest level of protection could cost nearly $100,000, but in many cases that approach is not necessary.

  • When paired with policy reforms and financing strategies, retrofitting existing homes can make communities safer while avoiding billions in disaster costs; preparing communities before a disaster occurs is the best way to avoid damage to homes and neighborhoods.

Retrofitting assistance in New Mexico

In September, the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) launched its Home Electrification and Appliance Rebate program.

This initiative, backed by $43 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, aims to advance clean energy adoption across New Mexico. The Home Electrification and Appliance (HEAR) program offers rebates to help low-income New Mexico residents—homeowners and renters alike—seeking to upgrade their homes with energy-efficient technologies, including insulation, heat pumps, and Energy Star-certified appliances.

Eligible participants can receive up to $14,000 in rebates per household, significantly reducing the financial barrier to making energy-efficiency upgrades.

Wildfire Wednesdays #145: Post-Fire Effects and Lessons Learned

Happy Wednesday, Fire Adapted Community!

This year’s wildfire season will soon come to a close across the west, but that doesn’t mean that the impacts of recent wildfires are no longer a concern. As many people in New Mexico know, the fire itself is just the start of a much longer post-fire recovery journey. Today’s Wildfire Wednesday offers some interesting research on post-fire landscape effects and highlights an ongoing educational webinar series which aims to answer some of the most challenging questions related to post-fire recovery and management.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Take care and enjoy these last warm days of autumn,
Rachel

Events

Post-fire webinar series from NWFSC and WA-DNR

Click on the image to access the full webinar series flyer with interactive registration links.

The Northwest Fire Science Consortium and Washington State Department of Natural Resources are hosting an ongoing informational webinar series on post-wildfire recovery featuring speakers and lessons learned from across the West. All webinars take place on Wednesdays through October/November from 12-1pm PT / 1-2pm MT. Presentations will be recorded, so if you miss any in the series you can watch them at a later date on the NWFSC YouTube channel.

Webinar #1: 10/9: RECORDED
Fire Scars on the Landscape: The Science and Management of Debris Flows
Recently burned areas are at increased risk of flooding and debris flows, or rapidly moving landslides. Learn more about the science behind why debris flows happen, and how managers use that science to mitigate these hazards, even ahead of the fire.
Recording: https://youtu.be/qrhYsTCmTW4?si=s5Ms9kpY958ynhZs

Webinar #2: 10/16: RECORDED
Exploring Diverse Community Pathways to Recovery
After a fire, communities have to work together to organize their recovery effort. Local governments and community groups are on the front lines of figuring out what this looks like in their local contexts. A social scientist and a long-term recovery group leader describe the social and organizational processes through which recovery can happen, and how communities may proactively plan for recovery.
Recording: https://youtu.be/oPRQEA27gKs?si=q39cRByMk_uc_tHx

Webinar #3: 10/23: HAPPENING TODAY
Post-Fire Restoration Infrastructure: Adjusting our Systems to New Patterns of Runoff
We reengineer and rebuild after wildfire through a range of treatments, trying to match our built infrastructure to new, amplified patterns of runoff. A national wildfire practitioner speaks to how leaders and policy makers are increasingly recognizing the need to manage the built environment to accommodate these changes, and an environmental engineer shares a powerful story of transformation in the face of repeated wildfire events.
REGISTER: https://tinyurl.com/PostfireRunoff

Webinar #4: 10/30
The Reforestation Pipeline: Ensuring Equitable Access to Replanting
The science behind reforestation is not new, but in a changing climate, new challenges are rising around what to plant, where to plant, and who has access to planting opportunities. Two nonprofit practitioners review the science of reforestation and how we can develop effective governance systems for implementing planting programs that match the scale of fires and fairly meet the needs of the impacted landowners.
REGISTER: https://tinyurl.com/ReplantingPipeline

Webinar #5: 11/6
Recreating and Relating to the Land After Fire
Wildfires reshape recreation access and experiences over the short and long term. A researcher shares emerging science that is revealing how people return to and perceive wildfire-affected landscapes, and a manager shares how they navigate decisions about supporting recreation in these contexts.
REGISTER: https://tinyurl.com/RecreatingPostfire

The REBURN Model

How post-fire landscapes react to and burn under future ignitions

Historically, past fire effects limited future fire growth and severity. These reburn dynamics from cultural and lightning ignitions were central to the ecology of fire in the West. Over millennia, reburns created heterogenous (ecologically and spatially diverse) patchworks of vegetation and flammable fuels that provided avenues and impediments to both 1. the flow of future fires and 2. feedbacks to future fire event sizes and their severity patterns.

These dynamics have been significantly altered after more than a century of settler colonization, fire exclusion, and past forest management, now compounded by rapid climatic warming. Under climate change, the area impacted by large and severe wildfires will likely increase — with further implications for self-regulating properties as described above. An in-depth understanding of the ecology of reburns and their influence on system-level dynamics is necessary to provide a baseline for understanding current and future landscape fire-vegetation interactions.

In a metanalysis by the authors, recovery intervals for forest fuel amount and distribution ranged from 30 to 334 years, indicating that in the context of an active fire regime, it requires nearly two centuries on average to recover pre-fire conditions following the largest fire years.

Conclusions from two 2023 papers (The REBURN model and System-level feedbacks of active fire regimes in large landscapes) found that long periods of fire exclusion during 20th century suppression efforts were unprecedented for relatively frequent fire landscapes, creating large swaths of uncharacteristic decadent mature forest, particularly at higher elevations. The lack of ‘ecological memory’ normally associated with past fires strongly influences subsequent fire behavior and effects, leading to large patches burning with stand replacing fire, followed by generally abundant post-fire regeneration of fast-growing shrubs or conifers. This abundant vegetation and fire-killed tree snags and logs, all of which are readily available to burn, increases the chances of secondary and tertiary severe reburns, with additional implications on carbon storage, emissions, and smoke impacts to surrounding communities.

The biggest takeaway is that unless active fire management is applied to break up forest continuity, future drying trends across the West and the potential for increased lightning activity suggest that burned areas will continue to reburn at mixed - including high - severity, and fire will play an increasingly important role in this synchronized and compositionally simplified landscape as it recovers. A return of prescribed fire or managed wildfire to previously burned areas will start the process of introducing temporal variation and increasing resilience to future wildfires, whereas complete suppression will predispose the landscape to future large and severe wildfires. This means that much of the landmass which is burned and in some stage of post-fire recovery acts as a fire buffer, making it critical for the rest of the forest to remain forest. Burned and recovering vegetation mosaics provide functional stabilizing feedbacks, a kind of metastability, which limit future fire size and severity, even under extreme weather conditions.

Unexpected Post-Fire Effects

Fire scars inform weather and continue to reshape the landscape

In late 2021, William R. Cotton, Professor Emeritus of Meteorology at Colorado State University sat down with The Conversation, an independent collaboration between editors and academics that provides informed news analysis and commentary to the general public. He provided a think piece based on research by himself and his colleague Elizabeth Page on how large fire scars can impact the frequency and severity of post-fire thunderstorms, accelerating the post-fire impacts on the landscape. Read the full article here.

Debris Flow in Cedar Creek near Ruidoso, NM following the 2024 Salt/South Fork Fire Complex. Photo courtesy of the South Fork and Salt Fires Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team.

“Wildfires burn millions of acres of land every year, leaving changed landscapes that are prone to flooding. Less well known is that these already vulnerable regions can also intensify and in some cases initiate thunderstorms. Wildfire burn scars are often left with little vegetation and with a darker [often hydrophobic] soil surface that tends to repel rather than absorb water. These changes in vegetation and soil properties leave the land more susceptible to flooding and erosion, so less rainfall is necessary to produce a devastating flood and debris flow than in an undisturbed environment.”

What is perhaps more interesting is that research has shown that burn scars can affect the microclimate within and above the scar, “initiating or invigorating thunderstorms, raising the risk both of flooding and of lightning that could spark more fires in surrounding areas”. This happens through several mechanisms:

  1. Surface temperatures and heat flux increase significantly over burn scars due to lack of vegetation, reduced soil moisture, and lower surface albedo – essentially how well it reflects sunlight. When burned soil is darker, it absorbs more energy from the sun.

  2. “The temperature difference can drive air currents, causing convection – the motion of warmer air rising and cooler air sinking. When that rising warm air draws in more humid air from surrounding areas, it can produce cumulonimbus clouds and even thunderstorms that can trigger rain and flooding.” This leads to burn scars enhancing both updraft winds and precipitation from storms developing overhead by ~15%.

“[For] how long burn scars will continue to fuel storms depends on how arid the region is, how quickly vegetation recovers, [and how the local climate and climatic patterns are changed by global warming]. Forecasters, emergency responders and people living in and near wildfire burn scars need to be aware that these areas are at risk for potential major flooding and debris flows and invigorated storms with a potential for heavy precipitation”, oftentimes for years or decades after the fire has burned. This is exemplified by the experience of Santa Clara Pueblo with Santa Clara Canyon, an area hard-hit by the Las Conchas Fire which is still experiencing highly destructive floods nearly 15 years post-fire.

A photo compilation of post-fire flooding impacts to the canyon. Photos were taken in June 2024, 14 years after the Las Conchas Fire. Photos are the property of Santa Clara Pueblo, Office of Govenor: CCF_000027.pdf

An excerpt from the letter from the Office of Govenor to the Santa Clara Pueblo Community describing the June 20. 2024 storm and impacts to the canyon.

4th Southwest Fire Ecology Conference

Register for the opportunity to learn and network this November!

The Southwest Fire Science Consortium, Arizona Wildfire Initiative, and the Association for Fire Ecology are hosting the 4th Southwest Fire Ecology Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico from November 18-22, 2024. With the conference theme, The Southwest Fire Science Journey: Lessons from the Rearview, New and Unfamiliar Routes, and Promising Horizons, participants and organizers seek to gain a better understanding of the past, present, and future of fire in the Southwest, including the roll of burned landscapes and lessons that can be learned from the post-fire environment and applied to future recovery and protection work. This conference will bring together professionals to share knowledge, exchange ideas, and discuss the latest advancements in fire ecology research and management with a focus on the southwestern United States.  Register now for a unique opportunity to connect with fellow professionals and engage in stimulating discussions that will shape the future of fire ecology in this region.

Wildfire Wednesdays #144: Fall Prescribed Fire Season

Hello FACNM Community,

It’s Fall and there is smoke in the air — and not just from the green chile roasting. Fall is a time when prescribed fires are commonly implemented. With Winter on the way and temperature and humidity dropping steadily, the mild weather conditions of Fall in New Mexico are supportive of the lower intensity prescribed fire that land managers want to see more of on the landscape. Lower intensity prescribed fire allows land managers to accomplish a wide range of ecological and public safety objectives.

Through carefully planning and implementation of prescribed fire, land managers are able to reduce the severity of future wildfires by influencing the residual densities and fuel loadings of forested areas while at the same time supporting nutrient cycling, regeneration, and understory diversity of many fire-adapted forests across New Mexico. The reduction in fire severity that prescribed fire generates not only protects forests from being converted to shrublands by high severity wildfire, but it also supports a more effective fire response from land management agencies, keeping our communities and water resources safer.

So, as you may be smelling smoke in the coming weeks, read on for a better understanding of the rationale and context surrounding the use of prescribed fire on both public and private lands in New Mexico.

This week’s Wildfire Wednesdays, includes:

  • Prescribed Fire 101

    • NM RX Fire Council

    • NM Certified Burner Program

  • Prescribed Fire Information - NMfireinfo.com

  • Smoke Exposure Mitigation

  • NM Wildland Urban Fire Summit - Next week in Taos!

Prescribed Fire 101

Over a century of fire exclusion and suppression has led to negative impacts for fire-adapted ecosystems across New Mexico through the increasing prevalence of uncharacteristically large and severe fires that threaten lives, property, forests, wildlife, and clean water. Wildfires can be reduced in severity and made easier to manage by reducing the density and connectivity of trees within forests and reducing the prevalence of dense forests across landscapes. The pace and scale of forest management needs to increase in order to reduce the threats of large, high severity wildfires, most notably within the wildland-urban interface (WUI) and on private lands.

Both the need to reduce the threat of wildfires by changing fire behavior, and the need to return fire as an ecological process, are addressed through prescribed burning. It is called prescribed burning because land managers carefully prescribe the weather conditions that will support the fire behavior they need to meet their objectives and only ignite the prescribed fire if the current and forecasted conditions match the prescription. Within the WUI, where homes are interspersed throughout naturally vegetated areas, prescribed burning is more difficult and complex. Liability and insurance are two elements that make prescribed burning on private lands difficult, especially within the WUI.

NM RX Fire Council

New Mexico has what is called a Prescribed Fire Council (PFC). These councils are generally statewide organizations that often work in tandem and share many common goals with localized prescribed burn associations. PFCs allow private landowners, fire practitioners, agencies, non-governmental organizations, policymakers, regulators, and others to exchange information related to prescribed fire and promote public understanding of the importance and benefits of fire use.

A map showing which states have Prescribed Fire Councils, from the Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils, Inc.

PFCs date back to 1975, when the first council in the US was created in Florida in response to rapid development in Miami. Shortly thereafter, the North Florida Prescribed Fire Council was created in 1989 and more explicitly focused on prescribed fire. Neighboring states observed the success of Florida’s programs and began adopting the council model to incorporate federal, state, and private interests. Eventually, prescribed fire councils started to spread beyond the Southeast and across the country. Today, most states have established councils.

For those who want to get involved in New Mexico, membership in the New Mexico Prescribed Fire Council is open to anyone who has a passion for utilizing beneficial fire as a land management tool. Visit the website to become a member or to learn more about the resources provided by the council.

For more information about prescribed fire councils, view this FAC Learning Network webinar recording for a brief overview!

NM Certified Burner Program

New Mexico EMNRD Forestry Division (‘State Forestry’) launched a free publicly available prescribed burning curriculum in autumn 2023. This training, required by the passage of the 2021 Prescribed Burning Act, is accessed through their website. Both primary training and certification waivers are offered through their Canvas portal, where interested individuals can create a free account using the code provided on the Forestry Division - Prescribed Burning webpage. You can choose to sign up for pile burning or broadcast burning courses and progress through the interactive modules which cover topics such as safety, public relations, fire behavior, techniques, etc. Learn more about the Act, and the Curriculum available to landowners and individuals interested in learning how to conduct prescribed burns in a safe manner, by viewing the recording of the FACNM webinar on Supporting Prescribed Fire in New Mexico.

Prescribed Fire Information

NMfireinfo.com

NMfireinfo.com is an interagency effort by federal and state agencies in New Mexico to provide timely, accurate, fire and restriction information for the entire state, including updates about prescribed fires across the state. The agencies that support this site are the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, State of New Mexico, and US Forest Service.

This site is updated as often as new information is available from the Southwest Coordination Center, individual forests, national parks, state lands, tribal lands and BLM offices. The aim of NMfireinfo.com is to provide one website where the best available information and links related to wildfire and restrictions can be accessed.

Smoke Exposure Mitigation

One of the best ways to reduce the impact of smoke is by reducing the amount of smoke that enters your building and filtering harmful particles from the air. If you have a central air conditioning system in your home, set it to re-circulate or close outdoor air intakes to avoid drawing in smoky outdoor air.  Upgrading the filter efficiency of the heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system and changing filters frequently during smoke events greatly improves indoor air quality.  

Smaller portable air cleaners are a great way to provide clean air in the areas where you spend most of your time. Essentially these are filters with an attached fan that draws air through the filter and cleans it.  These cleaners can help reduce indoor particle levels, provided the specific air cleaner is properly matched to the size of the indoor environment in which it is placed, and doors and windows are kept shut. They should be placed in the bedrooms or living rooms to provide the most effectiveness. 

When air quality improves, such as during a wind shift or after a rain, make sure to use natural ventilating to flush out the air in your building. 

The Winix 5300-2 and 5500 is what FACNM uses for our HEPA loan program

The Winix 5300-2

Selecting a Filter - For either portable filters or HVAC filters make sure to select a filter that is true HEPA or has a MERV rating of 13 or higher. These ratings refer to the size of particles that the filter will remove from the air and in this case they are certified to remove particles down to .3 microns in size. This is the minimum needed to remove the small harmful particles in smoke.

When selecting a portable filter, the other rating to pay attention to is CADR or Clean Air Delivery Rate. This refers to the volume of air that passes trough the unit. A CADR of 200 means the unit provides 200 cubic feet of clean air per minute, and often this number is equated to the room size that it will effectively purify the air in. In a 300 sq foot room a filter with a rating of 200 CADR will cycle the air through the filter 4-5 times per hour. While any filter will provide clean air those with lower CADRs will simply work more slowly. Lastly, make sure to avoid filters that claim to produce ozone to destroy pathogens, as ozone is a respiratory irritant. 

More information about filters and guides to selecting one can be found in the Resources section below.  

Face Masks - Face masks can be an effective way to reduce your exposure to smoke when they are fit correctly and are the proper rating. Make sure the mask you use is rated at least N95 or N100 and that you take care to fit it properly. These masks will filter out the small particles that are the most hazardous to your health. Paper masks only filter out large particles and will not provide the filtration needed to protect you from smoke. 

HEPA Filter Loan Program

With support from the New Mexico State University, the national Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network, and the Forest Stewards Guild, FACNM is pleased to offer this pilot HEPA Filter Loan program. These filters are available to smoke sensitive individuals during periods of smoke impacts in some areas of Northern New Mexico, but we hope to expand to more areas soon. We have a small amount of portable air cleaners that will filter the air in a large room such as a living room or bed room. These will be distributed on a first come- first served basis for predetermined time periods. You will need to provide contact info and come to office listed for your area to sign for the filter and pick it up.  Please look over the HEPA Air Filter Check-Out Contract.

To view contact information for the HEPA loan program in your area, visit the FACNM smoke page.

For general information about the program contact Gabe Kohler at the Forest Stewards Guild at gabe@forestguild.org.

Upcoming Events

NM Wildland Urban Fire Summit - Oct. 8-10th in Taos, New Mexico!

October 8th-10th in Taos, NM at the Sagebrush Inn

Join us next week in Taos County for the Wildland Urban Fire Summit! WUFS is New Mexico’s leading event for wildfire preparedness and planning. Join your peers, community leaders, fire service professionals, and federal, state, tribal, and local governments for this in-person event. Community members will share regional history and discuss living in and adapting to the Wildland Urban Interface. Learn the latest techniques, strategies, and resources for wildfire preparedness, mitigation, and recovery. Expand your network of peers and experts to assist you in your fire/disaster resiliency goals. This event is open to the public, and we encourage everyone to attend.

Summit highlights:

  • Welcome from NM State Forester Laura McCarthy

  • Property insurance & home mitigation 

  • Taos-region focus & field trip (Wednesday)

  • Emergency communications

  • Finding and using funding

  • Ruidoso 2024 events

Wildfire Wednesdays #143: It Takes a Village to Save a Village

Happy Wednesday and happy autumn, Fire Adapted New Mexico!

As summer comes to a close, western skies continue to be filled with wildfire smoke from blazes in California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and other hot and dry forested states. Wildfires continue to follow the trend of igniting earlier and burning later into the year, breaking out of what we have traditionally thought of as ‘wildfire season’ and blurring the lines of property ownership and fire response decision jurisdiction as they race across entire landscapes. What can we do in response to ensure that our homes, businesses, and communities are ready for wildfire year-round?

Emerging guidance from the Institute for Home and Business Safety, United Policyholders, and others suggests that the best protection is strength in numbers. While single parcel defensible space and home hardening has been shown to work, it works a lot better when neighbors meet and do the work together, creating fuel breaks that protect the entire community, designing their defensible space together, and investing in neighborhood-wide protection plans, home hardening upgrades, safety ordinances, and more.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Be well and enjoy the equinox,
Rachel

Updated Fire Preparedness Guidelines

Expanding beyond individual parcels to encompass community readiness

The history and drivers of wildfire

For much of the West, fire is part of the natural landscape. However, wildfires become catastrophes when they burn at historically high severity, frequency, are driven by extreme weather, and move into our built environment. This can lead to uncontrollable structure-to-structure fire spread where an urban conflagration unfolds. Urban fire follows humans (population), drought, and wind. New Mexico has these all of these conflagration conditions:

  • The state has experienced the same population boom as the rest of the West, especially since 2020.

  • Almost all of New Mexico is in some state of drought and has been since 2019.

  • The state regularly experiences high wind, which often coincides with and exacerbates dry periods.

Urban firestorms have been a part of cities and their evolution across the globe for centuries. They have been applied as weapons of war as well. The 1666 London Fire was one of the first well documented urban conflagrations. It had similar characteristics to what we see in today’s wildfire-driven built environment conflagrations: drought conditions, human causation for ignition, and a high structure density with fuels between buildings. From the 1600s through the early 1900s, urban fire plagued cities globally (IBHS, The Return of Conflagration in Our Built Environment). Over the last century, we have solved this problem in our city centers but have recreated the risky conditions in our suburban and WUI areas.

The importance of community-level preparedness

The Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) and other prominent fire preparedness organizations recommend using WUI code requirements to increase resilience, in addition to encouraging cities to make different individual, community, and policy choices. In this way, fire science can inform resilient thinking.

Critical elements of fire resilience:

Click on the image to view a full-size version.

  • Individual

    • A non-combustible “zone 0”.

    • Impenetrable vents and roofs.

    • Combustible elements between properties - find ways to break those connections.

  • Community

    • Parcel-level measures must be implemented at scale (such as fuel buffers along roads) so that communities can break the chain of conflagration and act as fuel breaks, not fuel sources.

  • Policy

    • Clustered financial incentives from the State to implement resilient retrofits (treat an entire neighborhood at once).

    • Require defensible space and fire-resistant design of new homes.

Most buildings are not designed to resist intense flame contact, and once ignited, they contribute as additional fuel to the fire. Therefore, to stall this “domino effect,” maintaining a proper separation between buildings is crucial in a resilient community. High fuel continuity, where fuels are densely distributed and interconnected, can promote the rapid spread of fire, as flames can easily move from one fuel source to another. The concept of fuel connectivity observed in vegetation fuels, such as grass and pine needles, can also be extended to structural fuels such as fences, sheds, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), and other similar objects. The underlying mechanism driving fire spread remains the same: when these structural fuels are closely spaced or connected, heat transfer between burned and unburned occurs at a high rate, leading to rapid fire spread.

It is important to thin, create defensible space, and implement home hardening measuring in and around your own home. It is equally important to talk to your neighbors about their fire risk, and hazards that you share, such as a coyote fence which separates your property but which would act as a connective wick for both homes during a wildfire. It takes action at all levels to prevent a fire becoming a conflagration.

Learn about these and other recommended actions as part of the new Wildfire Prepared Home program from IBHS, a designation program which enables homeowners to take preventative measures for their home and yard to protect against wildfire.

Wildfire Preparedness in Action: success stories from the frontlines

Home hardening, defensible space, and fire ordinances: lessons from the South Fork Fire, NM, 2024

Dick Cooke, Forester for the Village of Ruidoso and FACNM Leader, has been working for a long time to prepare the village for a wildfire. Those preparations were tested when, in June 2024, the South Fork Fire exploded to 15,000 acres in its first 24 hours and rapidly approached the community with ember showers falling a mile in front of the crowning flaming front.

A federal firefighter assigned to the South Fork Fire stands at a property boundary. Image credit: INCIWEB.

As Dick recounts, when the fire hit the village boundary, it almost immediately dropped from the tree crowns to the ground, creating a more favorable environment for firefighters to work around structures. He credits this to a thinning program that community leaders put in place decades ago. Ruidoso has a fire ordinance that requires all residents and landowners to thin the natural spaces around their homes and businesses to reduce the likelihood of fires spreading, either up or out. In most of the village, the South Fork burned as a ground fire with relatively low flame lengths, allowing firefighters to save numerous homes. However, firefighting personnel still had to contend with extreme weather, a wind-driven flaming front, and the ember storm which preceded the flaming front, with some saying that embers the size of basketballs landed on porches, roofs, and throughout the community.

After evacuation orders were lifted, village leaders started looking around at which houses survived and which burned. They noticed that most of the houses that burned didn’t meet home hardening recommendations. Some had wooden fences that caught on fire and were connected to a wooden deck or some part of the structure that was flammable, causing the fire to spread to the house. There were a lot of homes that use railroad ties in landscaping or as supports under decks, or that had fabric cushions on porch furniture - those ties and cushions caught on fire during the ember storm, which then spread to the house. Even with the ordinance in place requiring residents to thin around their houses, not everyone was following the rules or hadn’t done the work to protect their houses from embers through home hardening. When homes did survive, it’s because they were hardened from embers and flames and the neighborhood vegetation was mitigated (defensible space and forest thinning).

Image showing a patchwork of fire severity and structure loss in the Village of Ruidoso following the South Fork Fire. Courtesy of Dick Cooke, Village of Ruidoso.

The village is one of the only places in New Mexico with a fire preparation ordinance, so Dick believes that community level preparation made a big difference. 95% of properties in the village have been thinned to get into compliance with the ordinance, with properties being revisited every 10 years to ensure they stay in compliance. The intent of these rules is exactly what Dick saw happen in real time - putting the fire on the ground and preventing it from climbing back into the crown.

The final incident map from the Salt and South Fork Fire Complex, dated 7/3/24, shows the extent of both fires and the area within the Village of Ruidoso which was affected. Image credit: INCIWEB.

Dick believes that the work would have been a lot more effective if the area around the Village of Ruidoso had been treated in a similar fashion. However, the County, which has jurisdiction over the surrounding communities, doesn’t have a similar fire ordinance, and forest treatments on the surrounding National Forest System property were patchy, leading to a mosaic of thinned and unthinned land in the greater Ruidoso area. While each individual subdivision needs to do the work together, they also need to work with surrounding communities to create a cohesive landscape of fire prepared homes, businesses, and wild areas.

Hear about Ruidoso’s efforts from Dick and learn more about safety ordinances, Home Hazard Assessments, and fire preparedness in this archived webinar from Fire Adapted New Mexico.

A neighborhood saved: Circle Oaks, CA, 2017

Cheryl Lynn de Werff was certain her Napa County house was going to burn when she was forced to flee as a massive fire sped toward her Circle Oaks community. It was 1 a.m. and she had just gone to sleep in her second-story bedroom when a sheriff’s deputy pounded on her door. “I came running to the door and he says, ‘Get out! Get out now, there’s a fire coming!’” de Werff recalled. Over the next few days, the Atlas fire burned more than 51,000 acres, killed six people and destroyed more than 300 homes. A week after the community was evacuated, de Werff and her neighbors got the best kind of news possible: all of their homes were safe (Los Angeles Times).

The community of Circle Oaks survived the 2017 Atlas Fire due, in part, to their yearslong defensible space efforts. Photo from United Policyholders.

United Policyholders looked into what saved this community when so many others in the surrounding area burned during a rash of intense fires in California’s North Bay in summer of 2017. They concluded that “Circle Oaks in Napa, though evacuated, was largely spared alleged ‘due to vigorous fire prevention programs conducted by residents.’” Several contributing factors aligned to spare the community:

  • In 2005, a law spurred a change to the Cal. Pub. Res. Code sec. 4291, changing the defensible requirement from 30 to 100 feet. According to CalFire, “proper clearance to 100 feet dramatically increases the chance of your house surviving a wildfire. This defensible space also provides for firefighter safety when protecting homes during a wildland fire.”

  • The community had spent years installing fire breaks and brush clearance on public land near neighborhoods, which helped to slow the fire.

Neighborhood Ambassadors leading the charge

After the FAC Ambassador Workshop in Spring 2019, Firewise Resident Leaders began gathering quarterly, providing an opportunity to learn from regional experts, and to get updates from Ashland Fire & Rescue. Photo by Ashland Fire & Rescue.

Firewise Resident Leader! FAC Leader! Spark Plug! Firewise Ambassador! Road Ambassador! Fireshed Ambassador! Neighborhood Ambassador! Volunteer neighborhood leaders who lead wildfire preparedness in their neighborhoods and beyond, regardless of their name or title, can provide great benefits. A wealth of knowledge, skill, tools, and social capacity exists within most neighborhoods, official or not, and working within Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) neighborhoods are a critical scale to improve fire outcomes. Residents in many WUI neighborhoods see firefighters and professional foresters as reliable sources of information; however, these professionals have limited capacity and must focus in high-risk areas where their efforts are likely to yield results. Enter the neighborhood ambassador - because neighbors notice what their neighbors are doing and will often listen to them as sources of information and ideas.

The home of Philip and Linda Walters who were serving as Neighborhood Ambassadors when the Weber Fire approached their home in 2012. Note the red retardant line just above the house and the mitigated area between the house and the road. Photo by Rich Graeber, Division Chief in East Canyon on the Southwest Colorado Incident Management Team during the Weber Fire.

In 2012, the 10,000+ acre Weber Fire blew through a wilderness study area and into the canyon of a neighborhood where wildfire preparedness was being supported through neighborhood ambassadors. The residents’ defensible space and roadside thinning enabled firefighters to protect every structure and build a fire line along their dead-end road and defensible spaces, a feat which would not have been possible a few years earlier. “We ALL had been collectively thinking about THIS fire for a long time.  I have told many people that there have been a lot of dedicated folks who have been fighting this fire in their mind, on paper, and on the ground for a decade or more,” wrote Philip Walters, Wildfire Adapted Partnership Neighborhood Ambassador.

Read the full article from 2020 to learn about the origins of the FAC Ambassador Guide, the role that FACNM played in its creation, the importance of neighborhood ambassadors, and real-life examples of neighborhood organization leading to better fire outcomes.

Additional Resources

Upcoming Events

September 24th, 9:00am-3:00pm MT; Rociada, NM: Survivable Space Workshop

It is hard to imagine the possibility of more fires within the HPCC burn scar, but we know it is a reality. What are some simple ways to reduce wildfire risks to homes?
Hank Blackwell, chief consultant for the Wildland Resiliency Training Center, will lead a workshop teaching attendees how to protect structures in the HP/CC burn scar that are now vulnerable to new wildfires. Learn about fire risk myths vs. facts at this in-person event which will include property visits to gain hands-on experience assessing wildfire risk on sample properties.

Space is limited, register now! To learn more, email team@pvca.life or call 505-425-3019.

In the News

Navigating wildfire smoke damage: Insights from the 2021 Marshall Fire
Catrin Edgeley | Northern Arizona University

Dr. Cat Edgeley is a natural resource sociologist interested in social components of forest management. As a wildfire social scientist, she conducts research about how human communities adapt to wildfire. In this presentation she shares research on navigating smoke damage after the Marshall Fire.

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Practitioner Paper: Prescribed Fire Planning and Implementation Capacity of Non-governmental Organizations

In 2022, the U.S. Congress made historic investments in wildfire and fuels management through passage of the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Researchers from the Public Lands Policy Group at Colorado State University recognized that federal agencies need a better understanding of the community-based capacity available to support and implement prescribed burn projects if they hope to be successful in strategically deploying these funds across ownership boundaries and at scale (i.e., a large enough spatial extent to achieve fuels and fire management objectives). Additionally, there are many unknowns with how the widespread loss or unavailability of prescribed fire insurance policies has affected prescribed fire practitioners and will therefore affect prescribed burn operations in the future.

To answer these questions and inform effective policy solutions for prescribed fire challenges, the PLPC conducted a national online survey for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who plan, support, and conduct prescribed fire. They had four goals in mind when designing and conducting the survey:

  1. Describe the organizations that support, plan, and/or implement prescribed fire in the U.S.

  2. Identify their capacities and resource needs.

  3. Gauge how they may be impacted by the current scarcity of prescribed fire insurance.

  4. Determine how federal resources could be invested to support these organizations’ workforce.

The resulting report finds that NGOs across the West are generally well set up to conduct outreach to landowners, residents, and natural resources practitioners, to administer grants and manage funds, and assist with or lead prescribed fire implementation. There is room for improvement with educational programming, outreach to disadvantaged communities, outreach to Tribal governments, providing trainings and technical support, and improving direct community outreach before and after burns. The report’s key recommendation for scaling and supporting grassroots prescribed fire efforts in the West include:

  1. Establish dedicated and long-term funding streams to provide security for partners to offer training and support capacity building.

  2. Improve the availability and quality of prescribed fire/smoke liability insurance.

  3. Enhance and invest in prescribed fire workforce Invest in a national prescribed fire claims or catastrophe.

  4. Invest in a national prescribed fire claims or catastrophe fund for third parties negatively impacted by prescribed burn activities.

  5. Identify and support opportunities to reduce implementation barriers related to air quality and weather.

Wildfire Wednesdays #142: Diversity of Perspectives in Wildfire Preparedness

Happy Wednesday, Fire Adapted Community!

Over the past decade, the wildland fire community has been experiencing a paradigm shift from thinking of wildfire resilience in simple terms to recognizing the complexities of risk. An emerging theme within this shift is that simple conceptualizations of risk do not account for the social and ecological diversity of fire-prone areas. From international organizations to grassroots efforts, those groups working to address our wildfire dilemma and work for better fire outcomes are working together to better account for diversity of perspectives and experiences in wildfire preparedness.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Be well,
Rachel

Wildland Urban Fire Summit

The 2024 New Mexico Wildland Urban Fire Summit (WUFS) is happening October 8-10 at the Sagebrush Inn in Taos, NM! This is a space for community members, fire service volunteers and professionals, non-profit conservation groups, and federal, state, and local government representatives to gather and discuss challenges, innovations, and solutions for engagement in fire adaptation. During the in-person event, local community members will share regional history and discuss living in and adapting to the Wildland Urban Interface.

This year, the summit will focus on strengthening partnership through diverse perspectives – taking action in the WUI, including how new partners are developed, revitalizing or strengthening existing partnerships, and how the perspectives and resources they can provide help us to take action in our communities.

Agenda highlights include:

  • Welcome from NM State Forester Laura McCarthy

  • Property insurance & home mitigation 

  • Taos-region focus & field trip (Wednesday)

  • Emergency communications

  • Finding and using funding

  • Ruidoso 2024 events

View the full draft agenda and learn more now!

Diversity in Fire Adaptation: a Review

Researchers and practitioners from across the management spectrum have begun considering and making recommendations for how to make fire adaptation more diverse and reflective of physical communities, and therefore more effective and innovative, in recent years. Below is a brief collection of challenges, considerations, and recommendations for improving inclusion.

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Vulnerability to Wildfire: Going Beyond Wildfire Hazard Analysis

Massive wildfires, which are becoming more frequent due to climate change and a long history of fire-suppression, have strikingly unequal effects on minority communities. The Nature Conservancy recently highlighted a study which integrates the physical risk of wildfire with the social and economic resilience of communities to see which areas across the country are most vulnerable, a complexity acknowledged in their resulting “vulnerability index”. The results highlight the difference between wildfire hazard potential and wildfire vulnerability, showing that racial and ethnic minorities face greater vulnerability to wildfires compared with primarily white communities; in particular, Native Americans are six times more likely than other groups to live in areas most prone to wildfires. These findings “help dispel some myths surrounding wildfires — in particular, that avoiding disaster is simply a matter of eliminating fuels and reducing fire hazards or that wildfire risk is constrained to rural, white communities.”

The map on the left considers socioeconomic considerations to show wildfire vulnerability as a measure of how likely an area is to adapt and recover. The map on the right only shows wildfire potential across Washington, considering factors such as burnable fuels on the landscape, vegetation, weather and historic fire activity.

The takeaway is that “ultimately it’s about connections, building relationships and breaking down cultural barriers that will bring us to a better outcome.”

Read the overview and dive into the study here.

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Incorporating Social Diversity into Wildfire Management

Characteristics influencing differential adaptation to wildfire among diverse communities (adapted from Paveglio et al. 2012).

While research suggests that adoption or development of various wildfire management strategies differs across communities, there have been few attempts to design diverse strategies for local populations to better “live with fire.” Building on an existing approach, managers can adapt to social diversity and needs by using characteristic patterns of local social context to generate a range of fire adaptation “pathways” to be applied variably across communities. Each ‘pathway’ would specify a distinct combination of actions, potential policies, and incentives that best reflect the social dynamics, ecological stressors, and accepted institutional functions that people in diverse communities are likely to enact. This inclusion can help develop flexible scenario-based approaches for addressing wildfire adaptation in different situations.

Examples of unique pathway components for advancing fire adaptation through adaptive or collective action include:

  • Ways to promote property-level residential adaptation

  • Governance model/structure of collaborative processes

  • Fuels mitigation focus

  • Adaptation leadership and relationships

  • Incident Command teams and outside response

  • Wildfire impacts/short- or longer-term recovery

  • Mitigation aid or grants

  • Resource management focus

  • Means of communication, message framing

Read more about the pathways approach.

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More Effective Fire Adaptation Through Comprehensive Risk Analysis and Collaboration

Defining risk

The primary goal of simple risk approaches is to minimize the costs associated with hazards and their management. Simple risk approaches have their roots in actuarial insurance, risk management, and rational choice models.

The pri­mary goal of complex risk approaches is not to minimize or eliminate immediate risk (as in simple risk approaches), but to adapt to the risk over time. Concepts of complex risk stem from scholarship on wicked problems, risk governance, and Second Modernity Risk. The complex risk framework accounts for and expands on simple risk ideas and approaches by explicitly considering the multi­plicity of contexts, knowledges, and definitions regarding a particular hazard.

Moving from simple to complex and from exclusionary to inclusive

There is a prevailing tendency of wildfire management agencies and institutions to rely primarily on simple risk approaches to wildfire hazard management that focus on technical risk assessments, such as questions of probability of wildfire event occurrence, but do not reflect the complexity of contemporary wildfire risk. These insufficiently complex conceptualizations of risk do not incorporate and account for the social and ecological diversity of fire-prone areas, reducing options and creativity for addressing risk by disregarding the varied experiences and concerns that influence collective adaptation.

Approaching wildfire as a complex risk can increase adaptation to and coexistence with wildfire by recognizing and accounting for the complexities of wildfire governance amongst a variety of stakeholders who may operate at various scales using different knowledge systems. Such efforts are more likely to yield socially relevant and legitimate strategies for building wildfire adapted communities.

Although centralized simple risk approaches are an often-necessary part of addressing wildfire risk, greater emphasis on wildfire as a complex risk brings atten­tion to the reality that wildfire response and consequences are interconnected - that is, that decisions and outcomes at various temporal points, including mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, are linked to place-based networks, processes, activities, decisions, and outcomes of other temporal points.

Five principles to increase adaptation to and coexistence with fire through complex risk consideration

  1. Embrace knowledge plurality and purposefully integrate perspectives other than technical expertise.

    Including other types of expertise (and thus complexity), especially local definitions of risk and key values of concern, can increase the local relevance and legitimacy of the risk analysis which can be critical to local uptake and implementation.

  2. Use inclusive, accountable, and transparent engagement strategies that incorporate collaborative learn­ing processes.

    Effectively implementing the first principle requires participation by a suite of interrelated public and private individuals in an iterative process to find pathways to desirable and feasible situational improvements.

  3. Include underrepresented groups in collaborative processes and wildfire risk governing networks.

    By forgoing assumptions that experts fully understand the experiences or abilities of underserved populations ( e.g., Latine, Black, Indigenous and People of Color), more inclusive processes invite more diverse perspectives and, by so doing, can better reflect the differential adaptation abilities of populations and organizations.

  4. Account for potential uneven distributions of risk and resources to address risk.

    Existing funding models for natural resource and associated wildfire management efforts tend to favor organizations with resources and capacity to pursue grants or whose views on wildfire risk match predominant policy priorities. As a result, groups or communities who have less access to resources and capacity may find their opportunities unchanged or even diminished, furthering an already uneven distribution.

  5. Re-focus or re-balance investments across spatial, institutional, and temporal scales.

    Wildfire investments which are currently concentrated on hazardous fuels reduction, preparedness (hiring and training firefighters), and response (incident management) could be re-focused to provide more resources to a wider range of pre-fire mitigation work and rapid post-fire adaptive recovery for those affected by fire. This means investing in systems of wildfire governance, the social architecture that will support collective action and innovation in ways that are more likely to be responsive to the changing circumstances of on-the-ground fire risk.

Learn more about recognizing complexity, and its inherent diversity, in fire management.

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Living with Fire: the Influence of Local Social Context and Need for Diversity

One element of meeting our contemporary wildfire challenge must be accepting fire in the landscape and working with instead of against it; essentially, to change our management paradigm from fire resistance to landscape resilience under the umbrella of Living with Fire. Achieving this integrated fire management approach will require a) understanding the intersecting drivers of fire impacts and risks and b) designing creative and effective risk reduction/management and communication strategies. The integrated fire management model that we are collectively moving toward must include innovation through exchange, adoption, and adaptation.

Living with fire rests on four essential pillars of diversity:

  • cross-geography (information and knowledge exchange between communities and countries);

  • cross-risk (learning from water and flood management);

  • cross-sector (connecting science and practice); and

  • social diversity (diversity of voices).

With regard to social diversity, there is a growing recognition that human adaptation to wildfire risk is a contingent exercise that may vary across diverse communities. A long history of social science indicates that any effort to improve adaptation is more likely to succeed when it adopts a holistic view of wildfire management that is tailored to emergent patterns of local social context. The unique combination of local history, culture, interpersonal relationships, trust in or collaboration with government entities, and place-based attachments that human populations develop in a given landscape all can have a large bearing on variable efforts to create fire adapted communities. These fundamental differences between and unique characteristics of individual communities can make a big impact on how planning documents (e.g. Community Wildfire Protection Plans), policies (e.g. homeowner risk  mitigation requirements), mitigation implementation activities (e.g. home hardening), and education or assistance approaches are written or designed and how, or if, they are adopted by the local community in a meaningful way. Who is at the table and how space is created for everyone to engage matters.

Overall, fire researchers, practitioners, managers, and affiliates must better understand and design diverse strategies for fire adaptation that reflect the social diversity of human communities at risk from wildfire.

Learn more about one team's proposal for a set of methodological practices and empirical verifications that constitute a next step in systematically tailoring wildfire adaptation at the community level across diverse populations.

In the News

Porfirio Chavaria, the Santa Fe Fire Department's wildland-urban interface specialist, speaks to Patty and Mark Johnson during a home inspection. Image credit: Gabriela Compos, The New Mexican.

An article in the Santa Fe New Mexican, “Preparation for Wildfires in Santa Fe Starts at Home” recently highlighted the fire department’s community wildfire preparation services - and its wildland-urban interface specialist, Porfirio Chavarria (pnchavarria@santafenm.gov). It focuses on how individual actions tie into landscape-level preparation, saying “fires affect communities, not just individual properties,” and showcases some of the work that Santa Fe has done to improve wildfire outcomes for residents, including community education, wildfire mitigation agreements, home hazard analyses, the fire and weather alert system Alert Santa Fe, and future improvements such as rapid wildfire start detection.

Read more about these services and their success in the article.

Wildfire Wednesdays #141: Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fire

Hello Fireshed community, 

Today marks exactly two years since firefighters at last contained the historic Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire on August 21, 2022. 

Families, communities, forests and watersheds in Northern New Mexico are still recovering from the destructive wildfire. In fact, the Santa Fe National Forest is hosting two public meetings next week to present and gather public input on recovery efforts and long-term recovery planning.

Meanwhile, forest, water, and fire managers are rebuilding support for prescribed fire as an essential land management tool – one not without risk, but key to reducing future risk of catastrophic wildfires.

This Wildfire Wednesday features a review of the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, including: 

Best, Maya 

How the Fire Began

Hermit’s Peak, April 10, 2022. Source: U.S. Forest Service

A map of the HPCC wildfire boundary.

HPCC Wildfire Boundary. Source: Inciweb

In April 2022, a Forest Service prescribed fire just outside of the Pecos Wilderness area of the Santa Fe National Forest became the Hermit’s Peak wildfire when erratic winds carried embers outside the boundary of the planned burn area and ignited multiple fires in surrounding forests dried out from severe drought.  

About two weeks later, the Calf Canyon Fire began spreading on National Forest land nearby when a pile burn ignited by the Forest Service in January resurfaced. The pile had smoldered underground for months through several snowstorms, an event “nearly unheard of until recently in the century-plus of experience the Forest Service has in working on these landscapes,” Forest Service leaders wrote in a review of the escaped prescribed fires. 

The two wildfires merged due to unprecedented wind events and historically dry fuels and soils and burned more than 530 square miles over four and half months, until firefighters contained the blaze in late August.

The Costly Road to Recovery

Mora Valley, June 28, 2022. Source: Inciweb

The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, triggered evacuation orders for more than 27,000 people and destroyed over 900 structures, including 433 homes. Most of the land burned – 58% – was privately owned. 

Because the Forest Service was responsible for igniting the fire, Congress and President Joe Biden allocated almost $4 billion to compensate victims of the fire and subsequent floods. As of July 2024, while still processing and receiving additional claims, the federal government had paid out 5,633 claims totaling $926.7 million.  

Payments covered economic damages, up to five years of flood insurance coverage, and natural resource restoration projects for landowners. Additional recovery efforts in years following the burn have included aerial seeding of the burn scar and flooding prevention work by federal agencies and local organizations. 

Post-fire Flooding: A Prolonged Disaster

High-severity wildfires burn not only vegetation but also soils, changing the chemical and physical properties of soil such that it becomes hydrophobic, or water-repelling. This reverses forests’ sponge-like ability to soak up rainfall and instead makes burn scars susceptible to debris flows and flash floods.

The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire damaged soil in over half the burn scar, causing floods that killed at least three people, washed out buildings and infrastructure, and contaminated the city of Las Vegas’s water supply with ash and debris in 2022. The National Weather Service received over 75 preliminary reports of flash floods and debris flows in the burn scar from June 2022 to June 2024. For multiple years following the fire, surrounding communities expect to be at elevated risk for flooding.  

Prescribed Fires Remain a Crucial Tool for Reducing Wildfire Risk

The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire spurred the Forest Service to pause all prescribed burns pending a 90-day review of its national prescribed burn program. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said the decision “reflected the growing recognition that extreme conditions resulting from drought, weather, dry fuels, and other climate change effects were influencing fire behavior in ways we had never seen before." The prescribed burn that became the Hermit’s Peak Fire had been ignited in “much drier conditions than were recognized,” the review found.

“We cannot guarantee that prescribed fires will never escape, but the alternative to using this proven tool is larger, more destructive wildfires.”
— Santa Fe National Forest Supervisor Shaun Sanchez

The review underscored the necessity of prescribed burns as one of the most effective tools for forest, fire and water managers to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, protect watersheds, and increase the resilience of forests. Over a century of fire suppression in fire-adapted forests of the Southwest has, in combination with climate change, created conditions for high-severity wildfires that threaten people, property and drinking water sources and threaten forests’ ability to regenerate. Prescribed burns, on the other hand, facilitate a return to low-severity fires that promote forest health and increase firefighters’ success in safely managing fires. Of the about 4,500 prescribed burns conducted by the Forest Service annually, 99.84% have gone according to plan, the review noted.  

The Forest Service resumed prescribed burning with updated guidelines aimed at further reducing the risk of escaped prescribed fires. New requirements include daily, higher-level review of prescribed burn plans; more localized weather data; heightened consideration of drought conditions in burn plans; long-term monitoring of burns; and more extensive public outreach about prescribed fires, among other changes. 

Additional Resources

  • View this blog post in an easy-to-read PDF format on the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition’s Briefing Papers webpage. Other briefing papers on the webpage cover topics including: 

  • Stewarding the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed 

  • Source Water: Fire and the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed 

  • Containing Wildfire: The Medio Fire Success Story 

  • Pollinators and Wildfire 

  • Post-fire Impacts 

  • Forest Type Conversion 

  • Fire History in the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed 

  • NEPA 

  • Insect Defoliation in the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed 

  • The Intersection of Bird Habitat and Forest Restoration in the Southwest 

Wildfire Wednesdays #140: Wildland Fire Workforce

Hi! I am Maya Hilty, a new Fireshed Coordinator with the Forest Stewards Guild. In this role, I support the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition; conduct home hazard assessments; facilitate fuels reduction projects on public and private lands; and grow our Fireshed Ambassador program, where neighbors influence neighbors to make communities better prepared for fire. I will also be contributing to Fire Adapted New Mexico Learning Network into the future, including authoring Wildfire Wednesday blog posts. 

Hello Fire Adapted Community, 

As of today, almost 28,000 firefighters across the U.S. are battling 95 large fires burning over 3,400 square miles. 

For the past five years, an annual average of ~59,100 wildfires, including both natural ignitions and human-caused fires, have burned almost 12,000 square miles across the nation each year. That includes roughly 2,800 fires per year in Arizona and New Mexico – more than 7 ignitions per day on average, if the fires were spread evenly throughout the year – which have annually burned 1,150 square miles, or approximately the size of Bernalillo County.  

Many of us take for granted that, where fires ignite, firefighting resources will quickly follow. However, for reasons explored below, those resources are stretched increasingly thin during severe fires or during the most fire-prone times of the year. 

This Wildfire Wednesday features an overview of the wildland fire workforce, including: 

Best, Maya 

The Wildland Fire Workforce: A Who's Who

From the local to federal level, here’s who fights wildfires.

As outlined by the Santa Fe County Community Wildfire Protection Plan as well as U.S. Forest Service and Department of the Interior materials, the wildland firefighting workforce includes responders at the: 

  • Local level. This includes, for example, the Santa Fe city and county Fire Department Wildland Divisions. 

  • State level. The New Mexico Forestry Division created two full-time crews in 2024 and trains additional firefighters for hire in an emergency. The Division also collaborates with a state prison in Los Lunas to run the Inmate Work Camp Program, through which the state trains and hires four to six crews of people who are incarcerated to respond to wildland fires alongside other professional firefighters.

  • Federal level. This year, the federal wildland firefighting workforce includes roughly 11,300 firefighters in the Forest Service and 5,750 firefighters employed by four agencies in the Department of the Interior: the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service. Half the federal wildland firefighting workforce is only employed seasonally, for a maximum of six months, according to data from 2022.

In 2023, costs to suppress and contain wildfires amounted to nearly $3.2 billion in federal firefighting costs alone. Still, the Forest Service, which employs most federal wildland firefighters, needs more funding to meet their capacity needs to address the “ongoing wildfire crisis,” agency leaders say. 

Firefighters have a wide range of specialties, from members of handcrews and hotshots, who construct and patrol firelines; engine crews; smokejumpers, who parachute out of airplanes to reach fires in remote areas; helitack crews, who reach fires by helicopter; equipment operators; dispatchers; and other support staff. For more info, visit this Forest Service webpage about firefighting jobs. 

Collaboration is key

Thanks to mutual aid and joint powers agreements between tribes and local, state, and federal government agencies, the geographically closest firefighting forces often respond to the initial report of a fire regardless of their jurisdiction over where the fire started. 

Firefighting agencies also share an Incident Management System that enables initial responders to more seamlessly scale up a response. In the Santa Fe area, that means soliciting help from a Southwest Area Incident Management Team. 

This figure shows the 10 Geographic Area Coordination Centers in the U.S.

If a wildfire grows beyond the capability of teams in the Southwest Area (one of 10 wildfire Geographic Areas across the U.S.), the Boise, Idaho-based National Interagency Coordination Center assumes responsibility for mobilizing more resources from elsewhere across the nation. Because there is often a greater need than there is availability of firefighting personnel and equipment, the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group comprised of state and federal fire management leaders ultimately oversees where to allocate firefighting resources.

In addition, the United States has ever-evolving agreements with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Portugal that enable the countries to share firefighting personnel and equipment. The U.S. considers requesting international help when ~60% or more of domestic wildland firefighting personnel are committed to fires, and the U.S. has received assistance in the form of aircraft or up to 600 personnel from Canada, Australia or New Zealand most years over the past two decades, as detailed in this 2022 paper in the journal Fire. 

Challenges in Wildland Fire Management

"Over the last few decades, the wildland fire management environment has profoundly changed. Longer fire seasons; bigger fires and more acres burned on average each year; more extreme fire behavior; and wildfire suppression operations in the wildland urban interface (WUI) have become the norm.” ~ U.S. Forest Service

Growth in fire seasons and severity

This figure shows the annual number of fires and acres burned in the Southwest Geographic Area from 2013 to 2023. A linear trendline of acres burned shows a steady upward trend.

Due to factors including climate change, fuel build-up from fire exclusion, and expansion of the wildland-urban interface through continued construction of the built environment in previously undeveloped areas, wildfires have become larger, more severe, and more destructive. For example, the land area in the U.S. burned annually by wildfire has doubled over the past 20 years. Meanwhile, fire seasons have become longer – more than 80 days longer in the western U.S. – straining seasonal and regionally shared firefighting resources.

“We all recognize now we have a fire year, but we continue staffing for a fire season,” fire managers reflected in a review of the destructive 2022 Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire.

Resource strain and scarcity

As we transition out of the months traditionally considered the Southwest fire season – from April to July, when monsoons typically begin – more state and federal firefighting resources will flow to California and the Northwest, and fewer will be readily available to county and community fire managers in the Southwest.

Changes to the workforce

Agencies of varying sizes across the country are struggling to retain and recruit firefighters. In March, the investigative news organization ProPublica reported that the Forest Service has had an attrition rate of 45% of its permanent staff in the past three years. ProPublica and other news outlets reported several factors contributing to attrition in the Forest Service, including low pay, with starting wages of $15 per hour that do not reflect the demands of the job; inadequate attention to physical and mental health problems faced by firefighters; and the growing difficulty of the job as severe fires and extended fire seasons translate more frequent deployments. 

This figure shows 7 barriers to recruitment of federal wildland firefighters: Low pay, limited career advancement, poor work-life balance, mental health challenges, remote/expensive duty stations, limited workforce diversity and the hiring process.

A 2022 Government Accountability Office report similarly identified low pay as the primary barrier to the recruitment and retention of federal wildland firefighters, among other barriers such as a poor work-life balance; mental health challenges; and limited workforce diversity.

Enacted and Proposed Policy Changes

“The existing wildfire management system has not kept pace with demands.”
— National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, 2023 addendum

Bolstering the wildland firefighting workforce

Federal agencies have made some headway in recent years to address challenges facing the wildland fire workforce, including raising the pay of wildland firefighters. In 2022, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law raised the minimum wage of federal wildland firefighters from $13 to $15 per hour and provided firefighters with a temporary pay increase of at least $20,000 per year, which lawmakers extended through September 2024. 

For the upcoming FY25 fiscal year that begins October 1, the Biden administration has proposed a permanent pay increase for wildland firefighters, along with investments in firefighter mental and physical health and increases in the number of permanent (rather than seasonal) positions. Those proposals are currently making their way through Congress. 

A 2023 update to the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy recommended additional solutions, such as ensuring that recruitment efforts reach firefighters of diverse backgrounds and identities. In 2022, 84% of federal firefighters were men and 72% were White. Increasing the representation of women and marginalized groups will not only make the wildland firefighting world more just but will grow the dwindling applicant pool for firefighting positions. 

As outlined in the national strategy, the nation ultimately needs a larger permanent firefighting workforce to tackle the year-round work of wildfire mitigation, preparedness, prevention, and postfire recovery, in addition to what we typically think of when we hear wildland fire workforce: wildfire response and containment. 

Additional Resources

For more information about the rewards and challenges of a career in wildland firefighting, check out this Preparedness Guide for Wildland Firefighters and Their Families from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.

Wildfire Wednesdays #139: Proactive Home Protection Against Wildfire

As monsoonal rains impact the Southwest, post-fire debris flows and flooding are a major and ongoing concern for those affected by and adjacent to the recent South Fork and Salt Fires. Visit Wildfire Wednesday #138 for information and links to support the community.

Happy Wednesday, Fire Adapted NM!

Over the past year, news about advancements in wildfire protection and hazard reduction has been coming out faster than most of us can keep up. One common theme that runs through all of the new research is the emerging importance of approaching fire adaptation from a community, rather than an individual, perspective. From the 2018 fire in Paradise to the 2023 fire in Lahaina, this community of practitioners is seeing, in real time, the shift from wilderness wildfire to urban conflagrations.

Today’s blog focuses on resources from organizations such as the Institute for Business and Home Safety which can help residents, neighborhoods, communities, and cities better align their fire preparedness efforts with the latest science.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Living with Wildfire

Challenges across the American West

Wildfire disasters occur when wildfire flames and embers enter communities and destroy hundreds or thousands of homes. Multi-billion-dollar property losses in single wildfire events have become recurrent in the American West over the past three decades. An estimated 45 million residential buildings across the US are at risk of destruction from wildfires. This is a result of a combination of factors, including:

  • Historic population growth

  • Unregulated building in wildfire-exposed areas

  • Overgrowth of forests and rangelands

  • The effects of climate change

These disasters affect not only lives and property, but the safety and effectiveness of the fire service, the ability of businesses and local governments to recover, and the insurance industry’s ability to provide a financial safety net that makes it possible for people to rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

In a new report from the Institute for Business and Home Safety and National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), some key findings from an investigation into fire vulnerability of communities and measures of wildfire readiness in the WUI include:

  • Few states and counties with the greatest risk of wildfire disasters are using sound regulatory approaches backed up by consistent enforcement. Outside of California and Utah, there are no enforced, statewide codes addressing wildfire exposures to residential and commercial property; code use and enforcement at the local level remains limited.

  • The separation of wildfire safety elements from traditional building codes has resulted in limited use by state and local officials. This includes the absence of clear guidance on how such elements can be integrated into building codes. At the state-level, New Mexico has a state-wide and enforced building code, but elected to exclude any WUI code provisions.

  • A majority of counties and local communities largely fail to address wildfire risks to life and property in a comprehensive manner. These stand in sharp counterpoint to the few local jurisdictions have taken proactive approaches across a range of wildfire safety concerns.

  • Despite incentives to financially support wildfire mitigation and response capabilities in areas adjacent to national forests and rangelands, one in four high-risk counties have no Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs), while 17% of counties have not updated their plans in over ten years.

  • Data on fire service capability, response, and outreach activities in the wildfire arena is difficult to obtain and is highly variable in its form. These inconsistencies make it difficult to compare or evaluate the effectiveness of these activities in a meaningful way.

  • While local fire departments serve as a vital and trusted communications link for communities to understand how to reduce risk, support for inspection and outreach programs is highly variable across the West because local fire departments often lack both trained staff and financial resources.

  • There is no correlation between the amount counties spend on wildfire related activities and the use of WUI codes or community wildfire preparedness plans in those counties. Put simply, the investment of public dollars does not necessarily equate to strong codes or planning efforts.

Defining Wildland Fire vs. Wildfire Driven Urban Conflagrations

According to a recent public safety blog from ESRI, wildland fire refers to fires within natural landscapes such as forests, grasslands, and other undeveloped areas. These regions play a crucial role in ecosystem health, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. However, when fires ignite within these wildland areas, they pose significant threats to nearby communities, infrastructure, and lives.

Photo of the 2018 Carr Fire approaching a neighborhood in the WUI. Photo credit: Brenna Jones, US Forest Service.

The distinction between wildland fire and urban conflagration lies in their context: wildland represents the untouched natural environment, while urban conflagration signifies an uncontrolled fire that spreads rapidly through communities. A recent article available on USDA’s website, “WUI Is Not a Wildland Problem,” emphasizes that these urban conflagrations present unique challenges requiring tailored solutions beyond traditional risk reduction, mitigation, and firefighting approaches.

Policy lessons for improving wildfire readiness

According to Living with Wildfire, policymakers at all levels should work to establish much greater levels of wildfire readiness by:

  • Using and enforcing the most recent model WUI codes for new residential and commercial construction.

  • Requiring frequent updates of community wildfire mitigation plans.

  • Incentivizing and encouraging wildfire risk reduction activities at the parcel and community level.

  • Providing firefighters with the training, equipment, and other resources they need to be safe and effective in response, and serve as a valuable source of education for their communities

What can be done to improve readiness?

Resources for Home and Business owners and community planners

Wildfire researchers at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) have spent years researching wildfire through both field and lab studies. Now, in collaboration with other wildfire community experts, IBHS has identified the mitigation actions critical to reducing your wildfire risk. While we can’t stop wildfire, there are some steps from the Wildfire Prepared Program that can guide you through required actions to help protect your property. For those who are interested or who require one for insurance purposes, the program provides a pathway to receive a wildfire prepared designation certificate.

The program offers step-by-step instructions for where to start with your home or business preparation process, including a checklist of preparatory items that correspond to different levels of designation (Base, Plus, etc.).

For those seeking a Wildfire Prepared designation, the program provides a quiz to ensure applicants are familiar with the Homeowner Guide and taken the steps necessary for their home to meet all the requirements of this program before paying the application fee for an inspection. This increases the chances of properties passing inspection and being properly designated.

Keeping your designation comes with the requirements of an annual review and a three-year recertification.

The Southwest Fire Science Consortium and Arizona Wildfire Initiative have produced a fact sheet, adapted from the National Volunteer Fire Council - Wildland Fire Assessment Program training course, with a plethora of resources for learning about and protecting your home from wildfire. They suggest starting with a home hazard assessment to determine your wildfire weak points and opportunities for improvement, prioritizing you hazard reduction options, creating a list of all the steps involved to get to a point of being fire prepared, and identifying potential evacuation options as part of your Ready! Set! Go! preparation.

Additional Resources

Understanding community acceptance of fuels treatments

“Public support is crucial for successful fuels management, but vocal opposition can mask broader yet quieter community acceptance. It is helpful for land managers to have a picture of all perspectives, not just the most vocal ones. And what do communities think about fuels treatments? To answer this question, researchers from Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) and Wildfire Research (WiRē) considered data about public acceptance of fuels treatment from studies of 13 communities in the Western US.”

Key findings and management implications of the study included:

  • Surveys of 13 communities at risk of wildfire showed that public acceptance varies not only across types of fuels management practices but also by community.

  • Planning and implementation of fuels treatments can benefit from understandings of public acceptability.

  • Systematic social surveys can provide managers with representative data to complement existing methods for gathering public comments related to acceptance of fuels management projects.

  • Detailed data can show not only who accepts or doesn’t accept fuels treatment, but whose acceptance could shift towards support or opposition, providing a fuller picture.

  • Understanding the fuller picture can provide the opportunity for managers to be more strategic with communications and engagements.

Fire in the desert: an overview of a changing landscape

In the hot shrub-dominated deserts of southern New Mexico and Arizona, unprecedented large-scale fires in recent years have been driven by the exponential expansion of introduced invasive plants. A new fire mosaic is being established in the region whereby wildfires can spread from fire-prone forested mountains to the desert valleys, and vice versa, carried by greater connectivity of invasive grass patches. In the Sonoran Desert and other mid-elevation shrublands, an ecological transition from desert scrub to grassland has begun, which creates management and societal challenges as fire becomes a part of the ecology.

Increased urbanization at foothill elevations put tens of thousands of residents and billions of dollars of infrastructure in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) in jeopardy. The increasing likelihood of the alignment of fire-ready conditions (dry fuels, low relative humidity, wind) that can lead to loss of life and infrastructure in the Sonoran Desert at a scale similar to that seen in the 2023 Lahaina, Maui wildfire. To boot, the cost of wildfire mitigation and control efforts available today is orders of magnitude smaller than the economic impact of the grassification of the foothills ‘viewsheds’ and recreation areas, meaning that mitigation is actually cheaper than the true cost of doing nothing. In this report from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, the authors summarize the history and trends of fire and discuss future conservation strategies.

In determining what land managers can do, the report provides a management toolbox specific to fire in the desert:

  • Fuel break methods for the desert

  • Wildfire operation tactics for the desert

  • Identifying and protecting refugia

  • Fuels control

  • Public policy

  • Restoration

Wildfire Wednesdays #138: Supporting Communities Affected by New Mexico Wildfires

Hello FAC community,

The South Fork and Salt fires, which ignited on June 17, have burned through thousands of acres and hundreds of homes on Mescalero Apache land and in the area of Ruidoso, NM, driven by high winds, hot temperatures, and low humidity. The burn area also continues to be hit by severe storms and flash flooding, together leaving many New Mexicans displaced. To help with recovery efforts, this Wildfire Wednesday focuses on resources to help those affected by the fires, including a gofundme page hosted by the Forest Stewards Guild. The path to recovery for any major disaster, especially wildfire, is long, and there is often a lack of resources in the early stages. Please help by circulating this post to your networks to support the recovery process or by donating time and resources, if you are able.

This Wildfire Wednesday features resources to assist those impacted by the recent fires:

-Rachel

Donation Options

Go Fund Me: Donations to this fund, hosted by The Forest Stewards Guild, will be passed through to a reputable local entity to support evacuation centers and other costs associated with the early recovery effort. Typical expenses include: gas cards, clothing, toiletries, medications, etc.

Greatest Needs Impact Fund: Hosted by the Community Foundation of Southern New Mexico, this Fund is currently directing efforts to Lincoln and Otero Counties. It will provide financial resources to support the immediate and long-term recovery needs for the people, animals, and places effected by the South Fork and Salt fires. This fund is in partnership with the Community Foundation of Lincoln County and their ongoing Shelter Fund, New Mexico Wildfire Relief Fund, and Emergency Action Fund held within the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

Other reputable funds:
The Community Foundation of Lincoln County is taking donations to help the Village of Ruidoso, Ruidoso Downs, and Lincoln County (details here). Donations, such as food and water, can go to the evacuation center at the Inn of the Mountain Gods.
PNM is directing people to donate to the Mescalero Apache Tribe’s Fire Relief fund (details) and the Emergency Action Fund for New Mexico Fire Relief (details).

Supply donations:

The Rio Rancho Regional Chamber of Commerce is partnering with Edit House Productions to collect essential items. Supplies can be dropped off at either the Chamber of Commerce or Edit House Productions on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Chamber is also open Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
New Mexico United is hosting a supply drive for Ruidoso Fire Relief. They’re collecting items at The Team Shop daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
These items are urgently needed: Blankets, pillows, towels, toiletries and hygiene items, nonperishable food items, bottled water, clothing, new socks/underwear, diapers/formula, feminine hygiene products, first aid, pet supplies and food, sleeping bags, bandanas and work gloves and flashlights and batteries.

Emergency Information

Emergency response:
A temporary phone number on the First Responders Network is in place to circumvent the failed cell phone system in the area. Call (202) 794-5044 to check on friends, family, or the status of your home. Call the Public Information Line for general information: 575-323-8258.
If you are having difficulty locating a missing loved one due to a disaster event, call 1-800-Red Cross (1-800-733-2767) for reunification support.

Unemployment Assistance

Unemployment assistance from the state is now set up for people losing wages from their displacement due to the South Fork and Salt fires. This assistance is available to people living in Lincoln and Otero counties or on Mescalero Apache land that are workers or business-owners. The assistance is available from June 23, 2024 until December 21, 2024, as long as unemployment is related to the fire and flood disasters. To receive benefits, applications must show how their ability to work was impacted by the fire.

It’s a two-step process to qualify for Disaster Unemployment Financial Assistance.
First: qualifying individuals must apply for Standard Unemployment Insurance online at https://www.jobs.state.nm.us, in-person at a New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions office, or by calling the Unemployment Insurance Operations number at 1-877-664-6984.
To qualify for the disaster benefits, the state agency will first reject the application for the Standard Unemployment Insurance. Only then can people apply for Disaster Unemployment Assistance. Keep the rejection letter for the second step.
Second: after the application for standard unemployment insurance has been rejected, individuals must call or visit the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions (1-877-664-6984, open M-F 8:00-4:30) to submit a disaster benefit application. Proof of employment documents must be submitted to the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions within three weeks after filing for disaster unemployment benefits.

The New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions has set up an office in the Roswell Convention center and deployed a van with computers onboard to assist with applications. Individuals may also visit any Workforce Connection Centers. Local offices are open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

People are urged to file as soon as possible to meet an Aug. 19 deadline. Any applications filed after Aug. 19, 2024 may be considered “untimely,” and may be denied, according to a press release from the Department of Workforce Solutions.

Fire Updates

Evacuation orders lifted
Parts of the Village of Ruidoso reopened to full-time residents on Monday (6/24) morning at 8 a.m. By Tuesday afternoon, about half of the 8,000 village residents who were evacuated from the South Fork and Salt fires had returned.

The Village of Ruidoso published an updated map showing parts of the village that were still closed off, called “exclusion zones,” or burned areas with many different crews working in them. In these areas, there was massive fire-caused damage and burned houses. Authorities have cordoned off these places and are treating them as crime scenes until any evidence can be collected.

Federal Disaster Declaration
Otero County was added to the federal disaster declaration in the wake of the South Fork and Salt fires, according to an amendment filed Monday. This means that spending by Lincoln and Otero counties, along with the Mescalero Apache Tribe, to address the fires and floods from last week will be eligible for assistance from the U.S. government. People living in those areas will also be able to seek direct aid, such as unemployment payments (see section above).

Extreme Weather Awareness

Heat: In addition to fueling wildfires and flooding, extreme weather itself can be a threat to life and property. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released the HeatRisk Tracker which allows users to view heat risk, especially to those who are pregnant, a child or teen with asthma, or have a heart condition or other chronic health conditions, across the country. While hot days can affect anyone, those with the above conditions can be more susceptible to heat.

Floods: Unexpected floods occur naturally and can happen almost anywhere. Although river and coastal flooding are two of the most common types, fire scars and other areas with drought-ridden or hydophobic soils are often affected, especially when impacted by heavy rains. Flood maps, which show how likely it is for an area to flood, are one tool that communities can use to know which areas have the highest risk. Any place with a 1% chance or higher chance of experiencing a flood each year is considered to have a high risk. Use the FEMA Flood Map Service Center (MSC) to find your official flood map, access a range of other flood hazard products, and take advantage of tools for better understanding flood risk.

Wildfire Wednesdays #137: The FAC Framework

Hi FACNM Members and Affiliates,

Much of the work that we do towards community wildfire adaptation involves working together across boundaries and across disciplines. Fire Adapted Communities include community leaders, fire departments, local businesses, local governments, and land management agency representatives. It involves many people working in different roles, towards the common goal of making our communities better adapted to the reality of wildfire. The Fire Adapted Communities graphic and facilitator’s guide are helpful tools to support our work within and across these different roles. With that in mind, today’s Wildfire Wednesdays revisits the FAC graphic and facilitator’s guide as a framework for our development of Fire Adapted Communities.

This week’s Wildfire Wednesdays includes:

  • Fire Adapted Communities Graphic and Facilitator’s Guide

  • An Index of Funding Opportunities developed by Coalitions and Collaboratives and the Watershed Research and Training Center

  • Information about funding through NFFs Collaborative Capacity Program

Best,
Gabe

Fire Adapted Communities Graphic and Facilitator’s Guide

This graphic and facilitator’s guide were designed to help explain the fire adapted communities (FAC) framework. It describes a set of components that make up community wildfire adaptation, and gives examples of specific programs and activities that communities can undertake to reduce their wildfire risk and increase their resilience. Remember, FAC is not a one-size-fits-all approach; every community’s journey to living better with fire is unique. This graphic was created by the FAC Learning Network with input from community-based practitioners from across the United States.

Important Notes

  • This graphic is NOT comprehensive. It does not include all of the potential actions or programs a community could undertake to advance fire adaptation. The graphic includes examples of some of the most common actions and programs. When talking about FAC, you should include examples that are relevant to efforts in your community.

  • This graphic is not a checklist. Community-based leaders are best positioned to change a community's relationship with fire. Every community has different assets and challenges, and contexts that are always changing. Do not instruct people to use this graphic as a checklist. It is intended to inspire people to consider a range of issues and actions, not prescribe strategies for communities.

  • The content in this graphic was contributed by fire resilience practitioners working across the United States. Not all of the programs or actions will be priorities for your community.

What does this graphic explain?

The graphic is designed to communicate the fire adapted communities (FAC) framework. It depicts a set of components that make up community wildfire adaptation, and gives examples of specific programs and actions that a community could undertake to advance their work. FAC is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Community context matters and it is dynamic.

When should you use this graphic?

The FAC graphic can be used in presentations, or workshops where a facilitator walks participants through the graphic. The standalone graphic can also be used on websites or in printed materials. However, in these applications we encourage users to include a written description to explain that the graphic is not prescriptive or comprehensive of all valid FAC approaches.

Who is the graphic for?

The graphic can be used with community partners, FAC practitioners, the media, and agency partners. When talking with different audiences, remember to use language that will resonate with them. This graphic was designed with community wildfire resilience practitioners as the primary audience, so some language may be need to be adjusted for use with community members or others. Adapt the examples and language in this guide as needed to best reach your intended audience.

Grants and Funding Opportunities

Finding and managing funding for climate mitigation and forest resilience may appear challenging, but fear not. There exists a multitude of financial resources dedicated to support creating sustainable and fire-adapted communities, creating healthy and resilient landscapes, and safe and effective wildfire response. 

To support your development goals, the Watershed Research and Training Center and Coalitions and Collaboratives have created a Grants and Funding Opportunities page.

BIL/IRA funding opportunities

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act provisions and funding broadly support these efforts through grants and agreements. The four main grant categories are listed below.

  • Community Wildfire Defense Grants

  • IRA Forest Landowner Support

  • Wood Innovations Program Grants

  • Urban and Community Forestry

Other funding opportunities

Combining grants from various sources broadens the pool of funding, lessening reliance on any single source and bolstering financial stability and resilience. Below are potential funding avenues to fortify your community’s capacity for climate resilience.

This effort is supported through the Community Navigator Program of the USDA Forest Service.

NFFs Collaborative Capacity Program (CCP)

Proposals due July 12th

With federal funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the National Forest Foundation’s Collaborative Capacity Program for Forests & Communities (CCP) invests in the resources, skills and tools, and support activities that make collaboration for forest stewardship successful through a financial awards program.

Eligible collaborative efforts must describe how investments in collaboration will support a long-term strategy for achieving stewardship outcomes into the future and these outcomes must seek to benefit National Forest System lands.

Summary of CCP Program Requirements

  • Eligible Applicant Organizations: Nonprofit organizations; local governmental entities; Tribal governments and organizations; and colleges and universities. If your organization or collaborative group does not meet this eligibility criteria requirement, it must utilize an eligible fiscal sponsor.

  • Funding Pathways: There are two funding pathways - one for Tribal applicants and one for all other applicants.

  • Eligible Use of Funds: Funding must support collaboration or collaboration-based activities that aim to benefit forests and grasslands that are currently managed by the US Forest Service through the National Forest System.

  • Award Amount: From ~$10k to $150k per award.

  • Timeframe: Activities funded in this round will begin in mid-September 2024 and may run for up to two years through September 2026.

  • Matching Requirements: Cash and In-Kind match are encouraged but not required. Match is not a factor in project evaluation.

  • Letter of Support: A Tribal letter of support or resolution is required to apply to the Tribal Application Pathway; a US Forest Service letter of support is required to apply to the All Applicants Pathway.

This is a new program and funding details may change in future rounds.




Wildfire Wednesdays #136: Talking to Young People About Natural and Community Disasters

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday comes to us from contributing guest Cora Stewart, Field Coordinator for the Forest Stewards Guild. Cora manages the Forest Stewards Youth Corps and Mentorship programs where she regularly mentors - and learns from - young people across the state. Learn more about Cora and her work.

Happy Wednesday, FAC Community!

Whether you're 18 or 80, you can probably close your eyes and vividly remember what it is like to be a teenager. It's a potent part of life - the unlimited energy, bottomless metabolism, fearlessness of pain, but also the big feelings that NOBODY understands. It is, without a doubt, a very impactful time for many people, and personal experiences during these years can change the way a person sees the world and themselves. That is especially true of collective hardships that destabilize your daily reality. This week's Wildfire Wednesday discusses how to be there for a young person who is going through, or has gone through, loss due to a natural disaster. Before jumping in, please be aware that this post details experiences of evacuation and losing cherished community and living spaces; this may evoke some uncomfortable feelings or experiences of your own. 

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

- Cora

A Personal Story: Monsoonal Floods

When I was 16 years old, I lived and went to school by a river in a country called Niger. Most of the students lived on campus, away from their families. The grounds were beautiful, with mango trees, tortoises, and even some adorable hedgehogs. To me, it was home. There was no greater peace than sitting under those trees and feeling the warm breeze on my face. 

Sketch of children and adults using sandbags to construct a barrier as floodwaters rise into the town in the background

Like New Mexico, Niger is very dry but has a monsoon season. This particular year, we had heavy monsoon season, with much more rain than usual, and at first, it was a good thing. As it kept raining, the river got higher and higher, and eventually a dam upstream broke. As a result, 27 people died and the campus that I loved so much was at risk of flooding. The small community I lived with immediately huddled and started to work. We stayed up for the next three days, building sandbag walls and hoping it would prevent the water from reaching us. We gathered our belongings, prepared evacuation bags, and assisted the school with packing as many valuables away as we could in that short period of time.

On the third day, it became apparent that our efforts would not work and the school wall broke, causing the entire area to flood. We spent the next couple of weeks with no stable place to live, moving from family to family, while the school administration figured out next steps. A month after the flooding, the school was able to temporarily relocate, and life resumed as “normal.” 

I share this story with you because, although it was an incredibly challenging time, many people in my life were able to help me through the emotional distress. This experience and their actions impacted how I handle challenges today. I hope that in sharing my experience, alongside some other resources, you are able to help young people going through something similar. 

How to Show Up for the Young People in Your Life

Remain calm

Young people are always watching how their role models handle situations. I was lucky to have several adults in my life who handled the flood calmly and with grace. They honestly and genuinely assured us that even if things didn’t go how we wanted or expected, that we were going to be okay, taking the time to find small joys each day. This sense of hope and constant assurance helped me move forward into a new normal and accept changes as they came. If you are a parent or a role model to a young person, check out this article with more tips on how to help your child through a natural disaster: How to Talk to Children about War.

Find the controllable

Regardless of age, if you go through a natural disaster, you will experience a loss of control. This can be world-shattering for many and can result in distress and anger. This was certainly true for me - surrounding the flood, I felt angry and had lost a sense of meaning. However, I had people in my life who encouraged me to take back ownership. One of my mentors exercised with me to help me continue my routine and remind me how much I loved running. Another mentor was consistent about assigning tasks such as cooking to me and other students to help us channel some of our energy into something good. Although it may feel small, taking the time to encourage the young people in your life, to ensure a routine is maintained, and to provide small tasks they can accomplish can make all the difference in how they perceive themselves and help them to regain a sense of control during a challenging time.  

Make space for Conversation

While displaced by the flood, I lived with two different families before eventually landing in a house with some fellow students and school staff. Although this time was difficult, I also made great memories and had many meaningful conversations with my host families, with my fellow students, and with the other adults who were all in this situation together. Some of those conversations were formal debriefs with large groups, but more often it was one-on-one with an adult who I knew cared about me. These chats created space to share my thoughts and feelings and to process in real time, which in turn allowed for healing, empathy, vulnerability, and trust. To learn more about how you can start a conversation with a young person about difficult events, look at this article: Helping Kids Cope.

Check out this video to learn more about empathy and how it makes a difference in conversation.

When it comes to wildfire, talking to young people, providing them with facts and explanations of what fire is and why it happened, and allowing them time to process and ask questions can all help them cope with the stress and fear associated with living through this event. Visit this link to learn how to help children impacted by wildfires.

Work as a Community

One of the most impactful things during the flood was how the community I lived in came together to help. While building the sandbag walls, we had different groups come in each day to help or provide food. Even after the wall broke, we continued to help other families and organizations on the river. This was incredibly meaningful as it helped me to recognize that 1) I was not alone, and 2) together we could make a difference. It is important, when and where possible, to ensure that young people going through a hard experience have the opportunity to work with their community and to see that their actions matter.  

During the Hermit’s Peak Calf Canyon (HPCC) Fire in 2022, the Guild saw the firsthand impacts of the wildfires on our youth crew members. During crew onboarding and training in early June, about 6 weeks into the fires, we discussed why how we treat the land matters and how a catastrophic fire can cause so much pain and distress. Many members felt uncomfortable but didn’t know how to speak up. We hadn’t taken members’ feelings of fear and anxiety over the real-time fires into consideration and quickly learned that large group settings before trust had been built were probably not the right setting for those conversations. Afterward, we gave a lot of thought to how we could empower our crew members instead so that they would be able to feel like they were making a difference, not just talking about it.

In 2023, we collaborated with the Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance and corps members from across the stated spent a week working in the HPCC burn scar, helping the communities impacted by the fire. Our youth corps spent that week learning about watershed damage and restoration. They built erosion control and restoration structures to catch the significant amount of burned soil and debris washed away following the fire.

For many members, this was their favorite part of their season, seeing why it is so important to work as a community and feeling like they made a difference. For the Guild, it was incredibly rewarding that this project impacted and empowered our young people to come together in difficult situations. If you want to learn more about this work project, check out this article: Our Youth Corps' Collective Post-fire Restoration Efforts.

Additional Resources

Resources for Young People

Learn more about warning signs and risk factors for emotional distress related to wildfires and other disasters.

Graphic novel: create an account on Dark Horse to access this open-source graphic novel. Follow along as Meghan and Alexx encounter a wildfire, experience what it is like to be evacuated, and talk about fire safety in Without Warning! Wildfire Safety Comic.

Coloring book: educational wildland fire coloring sheets, available for download from The Smokey Generation (Wildfire Coloring Sheets).

Upcoming webinar

Wildfire is part of the landscape in the Southwest. It can be a threat to lives and property, but it is also crucial to maintaining healthy ecosystems. Please join the Southwest Fire Science Consortium for a webinar reviewing the top 8 biggest fires in the region in 2023 and looking ahead toward fire conditions for summer 2024. Presenters will place the 2023 fire season within the context of the last 10 years, pointing out trends and outliers in the timing, management costs, vegetation, and burn severity for each of 8 Southwestern fires larger than 10,000 acres, and then discuss the fire season outlook and summer weather forecast for the Southwest in 2024.

Wildfire Wednesdays #135: Fire Weather Alerts, Smoke Management, and Preparing for the Fire Season

Ahead of the 2024 Southwest fire season, this Wildfire Wednesday revisits information from Wildfire Wednesday #111 on red flag warnings, as well as information on smoke management, the 2024 fire season outlook, home hazard assessments, and a deep dive into homeowners insurance across the country.

Happy Wednesday, FAC NM readers!

Picture this: you wake up to the early morning light streaming in your window and turn your head to greet the day. You notice tree limbs dancing in the infamous New Mexico spring winds, see that the leaves on the bushes are looking pretty piqued, and remember that it has been a while since it’s rained. Pulling out your smartphone, you open the weather app to check the forecast. There, at the top of the application, is an alert which reads “Red Flag Warning” from the National Weather Service. What does that mean?
This week’s Wildfire Wednesday will break down alerts and watch-outs that come with the summer weather, including what they mean for fire risk and how to prepare for Red Flag days.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Be well,
Rachel

Red Flag Warnings

The basics: what is a Red Flag Warning?

The origin of the name, Red Flag Warning, is a literal one, according to Tamara Wall of the Desert Research Institute: “If there was… high fire danger, local fire stations would go and run a red flag up the flagpole. It was a very visual, kind of pre-mass communications way to signal to people in the area that it was a high-danger day” (NPR, 4/14/23).

From the Ready! Set! Go! 4-page guide on the basics of Red Flag Warnings, how to respond, Red Flag safety tips, and more.

According to the National Weather Service (NWS), which issues these alerts in conjunction with local and state agencies, a Red Flag Warning is part of a weather forecast which indicates a local increase in fire danger risk in the next 12 to 24 hours. This increased risk is due to a combination of critical fuel conditions and critical weather conditions (warm temperatures, very low humidities, and strong winds). This means that if a wildfire starts, the conditions are right for it to spread rapidly and be difficult to contain. Red Flag Warnings differ in timing from a fire weather watch, which is a longer-term forecast that warns of the possible development of Red Flag conditions in the next 72 hours.

Indicators of fire weather

Resource and image adapted from the Northwest Fire Science Consortium.

This combination of 1. low relative humidity (RH), 2. strong surface wind, 3. unstable air (an incoming or outgoing storm system that creates a significant temperature differential between the land surface and lower atmosphere), and 4. drought creates critical fire weather (NWCG, Critical Fire Weather). When you see a Red Flag Warning, it means that critical fire weather is currently or will soon be occurring. The alert, whether online, on the news, or on your weather app, will usually indicate for how long the Red Flag Warning is forecast to last. Fire management personnel take Red Flag Warnings into account and may respond by changing staffing numbers or preemptively moving resources into a certain region to be prepared for a potential ignition. During extended periods of high risk, local authorities may consider policy decisions like banning campfires or closing specific areas (see ‘How to Respond’, below).

In the Southwest, drought becomes an important precursor to critical fire weather by drying out live vegetation as well as logs, sticks, needles, and grass on the ground, therefore increasing fuel availability. Critical fire weather elements, combined to create an unusually dry airmass for the region and season, produce extreme fire behavior when a fire does start. As we transition from El Niño to La Niña regional oscillations and hit the beginning of the summer weather, it is worth noting that light monsoons can produce gusty wind, low RH, and lightning without much precipitation. Learn more about the 2024 fire season drought and precipitation outlook here.

All Red Flag days are not equal and the response to Red Flag Warnings may be different in different areas and on different days depending on Planning Level or local decision makers (Weather.Gov Red Flag Index). Differences in Red Flag days depend on:

  • The magnitude of specific weather elements,

  • Antecedent fuel conditions (have things been dry for a long time leading up to the Red Flag day?),

  • Drought periods - it may not take “as much weather” to produce control problems (if fuels predisposed by being quite dry)

The geographic scope of Red Flag Warnings

There are several contributing factors when it comes to issuing a Red Flag Warning, but primary criteria include relative humidity of 15% or less combined with sustained surface winds, or frequent gusts, of 25 mph or greater. Both conditions must occur simultaneously for at least 3 hours out of a 12-hour period, according to the National Weather Service. Meteorologists also consider how all forecasted weather elements combine to create hazardous conditions (e.g. moderate humidity combined with high temperatures and high winds), even if they don’t fit the humidity and wind criteria individually.

For local Red Flag Warning alerts, meteorologists look at forecasted temperature, incoming and outgoing storm systems (high- and low-pressure systems) with their potential for wind, the likelihood of wet or dry lightning, the dryness of fuels based on recent precipitation and season, and how local terrain will interact with wind and potential ignitions (YouTube: Forecasting Fire Weather in the US). Local forecasts also inform the national NWS Fire Weather Outlook forecast by contributing to fire weather composite maps and short-wave ensemble forecasts.

Fire weather forecasts are specific to a certain geographic area based on storm systems, temperature, terrain, and winds. Accordingly, Red Flag Warnings are site-specific, which means that one part of the state (e.g. the eastern plains near Las Vegas) may be under a Red Flag Warning while another part (e.g. Santa Fe on the other side of the mountains) is not.

While Fire Weather Watches may be issued with meteorologists forecasting up to 8 days in advance, Red Flag Warnings are only issued when the critical fire weather conditions meeting the criteria for these Warnings are expected to begin in the next 12-24 hours.

Click to visit the Red Flag map from the National Weather Service

The National Weather Service provides information on the scope of Red Flag Warnings. This information may be found in the alert itself (a text box showing what cities or areas are covered by the alert), or can be found by visiting the NWS weather hazards map.

How to respond to a Red Flag Warning

Spread the word!

Educate your friends, family, and neighbors on what Red Flag Warnings are, what they mean, and how to respond when they see the warning pop up.

Research the scope of the Warning and restrictions for your area

Begin your fire restrictions research by clicking on the image to visit the Southwest Area Fire Restriction map, hosted by the National Interagency Fire Center and the SW Coordinating Group.

Visit the NWS interactive weather hazard map to determine the area covered by a particular Red Flag Warning. Once you know if your current (or planned) location is under a fire weather watch or Red Flag Warning, visit the local city or county webpage to find out if that area is also under current fire restrictions or burn bans. Both local municipalities and State and National Parks and National Forests may enter into fire restrictions for long periods of time. These restrictions indicate a prolonged (seasonal) period of dangerous fire weather. During the warm months, it is always a good idea to visit the webpage of your destination park or forest prior to leaving so that you are aware of any restrictions in place.

Adjust your behavior accordingly

  • DO NOT burn debris piles.

  • If you are allowed to burn in burn barrels in your area, cover them with a weighted metal cover.

  • DO NOT throw cigarettes or matches on the ground or out of a moving vehicle.

  • If outdoor fires are allowed, make sure to extinguish them properly. Drown fires and charcoal with plenty of water and stir with a shovel to make sure everything is cold to the touch with bare skin.

    • Never leave a fire or barbeque unattended. Sparks or embers can blow into leaves or grass, ignite a fire, and quickly spread.

  • Avoid parking a recently driven vehicle on dry grass or other areas with vegetative cover.

  • Ensure that no chains or hanging metal are dragging from your vehicle or tow-behind trailer which could cause a spark.

Prepare your home

  • Before leaving home for the day, make sure that all house and car windows are closed and bring flammable materials like outdoor cushions inside the home or garage.

  • Create defensible space (including removing dead vegetation from around the house and clearing debris from gutters, around doors, and under porches).

Photo credit: Sonoma County Emergency Management Department.


Plan for possible ignitions or evacuations

  • Prepare your go-bag

  • Keep your phone charged

  • Make sure you know where your loved ones — especially people with disabilities or mobility issues — are during the day

  • Make a plan for what to do with any pets or livestock in case of an evacuation.

Smoke Management

Air Quality

In February 2024, the U.S. EPA strengthened the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for fine particle pollution (PM2.5). They have released several fact sheets about this rule change, including “Updates to the Air Quality Index…”, “Strengthening the National Air Quality Health Standard…”, “Wildland Fire, Air Quality, and Public Health Considerations”, and more.

HEPA Filter Loan Programs

Portable HEPA air filters provide clean and healthy breathable air to individuals and households by filtering out very small and harmful particles, such as those carried in wildfire smoke, allergens, and industrial smog. An episode of All Things Considered details the importance of making sure the air inside is clean and safe to breathe.

FACNM offers a HEPA filter loan program, with several participating areas across north and central New Mexico. These are prioritized for loan to smoke-sensitive individuals during periods of smoke impacts and are shared in coordination with network partners. An article from NPR highlighted the importance of a HEPA filter loan program in building public trust and how far individual actions can go, saying “today [Angie Krall, El Rito District Ranger, will] stop by a community library and lend an air filter to someone with asthma.”

For those who are unable to acquire a HEPA home air filtration system, ABC News and the NYT Wirecutter have guidelines for making your own DIY filters and FACNM offers guidelines on how to filter your air.

Smoke 101: Science Synthesis

In November 2023, the USDA Rocky Mountain Research Station hosted a land-management focused panel discussion with smoke experts to discuss the State of the Science about smoke. Topics included the differences in smoke from wildfires and prescribed fires, capability to accurately predict smoke, ecological impacts of smoke, climate modeling for future smoke load prediction, smoke exposure and health outcomes, and more. RMRS has since compiled the lessons learned from that panel discussion into a Science You Can Use: Smoke 101 synthesis!

State of the Air: 2024 Report from the American Lung Association

The Clean Air Act requires the U .S . Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set health-based limits, called National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), for six dangerous outdoor air pollutants: particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead. “State of the Air” looks at two of the most widespread and dangerous pollutants from this group, fine particulate matter and ozone.
This year’s report finds that “wildfires in the western US and Canada remain the major contributing factor to increasing number of days and places with unhealthy levels of particle pollution… Wildfires are also continuing to increase the severity of pollution, resulting in the highest ever number of days designated as [‘very unhealthy’ or ‘hazardous’ air quality].”

Additional Resources

Upcoming Webinar

Home Hazard Assessments (HHAs) are an important fire risk and readiness tool. Join knowledgeable fire and forestry professionals from New Mexico and Colorado as they discuss digital and printed tools to complete HHAs, local partners who can guide the process or travel to complete HHAs on-site alongside property owners and residents, how different Assessment programs are structured, why HHAs are a key fire readiness tool, how county ordinances and insurance providers can influence the need for HHAs, and what opportunities may open up as a result of completing them.

The Southwest Fire Science Consortium has just released a home risk analysis fact sheet containing steps homeowners can take to reduce fire risk. Step #1 is - you may have guessed it - conducting an HHA! View the fact sheet here.

2024 Fire Season Weather Outlook

In this 30-minute overview, meteorologist Kerry Jones with the USDA Forest Service provides a summer 2024 fire season forecast. Watch the recording to learn about what the spring transition from El Niño to La Niña may mean for summer heat, fire likelihood and severity, monsoonal patterns, beneficial fire, and reforestation efforts.

New York Times: Climate Forward Newsletter

4 Takeaways from an Investigation into Homeowners Insurance
Journalists from the New York Times conducted a deep dive into the home insurance industry to investigate how it is being impacted by climate change and what the ramifications might be. Their key takeaways were:

  1. Climate change is upending the insurance market
    "Previously small-scale threats such as wildfires, hail, and windstorms have become more intense and frequent. That means the threat to insurers has grown as well… the insurance industry lost money on homeowners coverage in 18 states last year”.

  2. Insurers are pulling back coverage in surprising places
    States across the Midwest, Southeast, and West have “seen insurance companies stop writing homeowners insurance, or [make] it harder to qualify for coverage… They’re also raising rates by 50 percent or more in some places.” The challenge facing the homeowners insurance market “is probably unparalleled in recent decades”.

  3. The consequences of that pullback could affect the broader economy
    “A breakdown in homeowners insurance doesn’t just affect people who struggle to get coverage. Without insurance, banks won’t issue a mortgage; without a mortgage, most people can’t buy a home. Fewer prospective buyers can push home values down, which means less property tax revenue and less money for local government services.”

  4. States are intervening in different ways
    “State officials agree the trends aren’t good. They don’t agree on how to respond.” Some states are trying to make it easier for insurers to raise premiums; others are trying to reduce insurer losses by encouraging homeowners to make their properties more resilient; yet others are setting up high-risk state-supported coverage pools for homeowners who can’t get coverage on the private market.

Wildfire Wednesdays #134: Wildfire Preparedness Day 2024

Happy Wednesday, FAC Friends!

National Wildfire Preparedness Day, held annually on the first Saturday in May, is celebrating its ten-year anniversary this Saturday, May 4, 2024! We invite you to join thousands of individuals and communities across the United States in devoting anywhere from a few hours to the entire day performing a variety of tasks to reduce the risk of damage or destruction by wildfire to homes and property. Since 2014, this nationwide day of effort has been coordinated by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in collaboration with Fire Adapted Communities and State Farm Insurance. While NFPA produced educational printed materials and other resources focused on wildfire prevention for many years, partnering with insurance companies and learning networks enabled them to expand their outreach efforts. The effort has grown over the past decade, giving participants a chance to network, connect with others in their communities partaking in the effort, and work with organizations they may not typically think of when smoke is in the air.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Happy May Day! Stay cool and connected.
Rachel

An Overview: Wildfire Preparedness Day

Each year, Wildfire Community Preparedness Day actively encourages groups and individuals living in wildfire-prone areas to complete projects that can help make their homes and communities safer from wildfire. As co-sponsors of Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, NFPA and State Farm are working to celebrate the campaign’s positive impact on countless homes and communities over the past decade.

With a vested interest in property loss reduction and personal safety, State Farm has played an active role in supporting the campaign since its inception. This year, to encourage participation during the campaign’s 10-year anniversary, NFPA and State Farm are offering a free banner to the first 100 people who develop a campaign project or event and post it online. This can be done by filling out the online form that tracks and maps community participation in the campaign nationwide.

“As wildfires continue to present an ever-growing threat to households nationwide, more communities are recognizing the power of teaming up to proactively address them. I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve seen over time and fully expect that the level of participation and enthusiasm in Wildfire Community Preparedness Day will continue to grow this momentous year and beyond.”
— Lorraine Carli, NFPA vice president of Outreach and Advocacy

Wildfire Community Preparedness Day provides science-based steps people can take to reduce or remove potential fire hazards from a home and its immediate surroundings – known as the “home ignition zone” – to help protect from embers and radiant heat from wildfires. Typical activities might include simple, low-cost home improvement projects such as clearing dead leaves, debris, and pine needles from roofs and gutters; keeping lawns and native grasses mowed to a height of four inches; or removing anything stored underneath decks or porches that could burn.

For more information about Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, project ideas, and free resources to download and share, including a campaign toolkit, visit wildfireprepday.org.

 

Resources for May 4

Where to start: an instructional video
On April 4, NFPA hosted a Facebook Live event in support of Wildfire Community Preparedness Day on May 4. Watch the video here to get helpful tips and the resources you need to start planning for a Prep Day event in your area.

Easy guidelines: Wildfire Preparedness Factsheet
This easy-to-share factsheet can help others in your community learn more about Wildfire Preparedness Day and what they can do to make a difference. “Studies show that measures taken at the home and in the area within 100 feet of it, known as the Home Ignition Zone (HIZ), have a significant impact on minimizing damage and loss. Something as simple as clearing the immediate 5-foot zone around the home can assist in making a huge difference in avoiding a catastrophe.”

Wildfire Community Preparedness Day Toolkit
This year, Preparedness Day is focused on what residents can do on and around their home to help protect against the threat of wildfires. The Prep Day toolkit provides a list of project ideas, safety tips, and more, to help guide you towards event day.

Local Wildfire Preparedness Events

Many community leaders and members, including FACNM Leaders, have hosted or are gearing up to facilitate Wildfire Preparedness Events in their communities on or around Wildfire Prep Day! Ahead of the annual event, FACNM received funding from WPD parent organization, NFPA, and has distributed nearly $20,000 to support 12 local events for members and leaders. This is made possible through the semi-annual FACNM microgrants award program. Read on to learn about some of the events happening around the state and to find motivation to host the next wildfire preparedness day in your community!

Ready, Set, Go: A Wildfire Preparedness Workshop, presented by Fire Adapted New Mexico Learning Network and Villages of Santa Fe.

A panel on How Does the Threat of Wildfire Affect Your Home Owner's Insurance answers audience questions. Photo courtesy of FACNM Leader Ann Church.

It was a typical Santa Fe spring day this past Saturday, April 27, at Christ Church, starting with snow and ending with sunshine. More than 50 attendees gathered for a variety of presentations and activities related to community wildfire preparedness. The SimTable captivated audiences with its ability to visually project fire traveling in and around Santa Fe, translating the idea from abstract concept to concrete representation. A presentation on Go Kits sparked great conversations about what it really means to be prepared and have a plan when fire arrives. Home Hazard Assessments, presented by Alyssa Mineau from the Forest Stewards Guild, provided participants with a actionable starting point for working on their homes and communities. By the end of the day, several HOA and community leaders had expressed interest in presenting the Ready, Set, Go! program to their neighborhoods – a great example of how community preparedness events motivate and expand community outreach. Mayor Alan Webber gave opening remarks and a reporter from the Santa Fe New Mexican covered the event.
A new presentation, How Does the Threat of Wildfire Affect Your Home Owner's Insurance, sparked some great questions from the audience. The panel, moderated by Madeline Carey, gave an overview of what residents of the Santa Fe area can expect, including how to respond to insurance companies and the threat of losing coverage. Panelists included Lou Macias and Melissa Robertson from the Office of Superintendent of Insurance, Chris Schaum from Chris's Tree Service, and George Ducker, Wildfire Prevention & Communications Coordinator from The New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) Forestry Division. The Realtor Association expressed interest in presenting the program to local realtors.

Other Community Wildfire Preparedness Day events organized by FACNM Leaders and Members around the state

La Barbaria Canyon and Tesuque will both be holding chipper events and community green slash disposal days on May 4.

Santa Fe Audubon Society will be preparing an educational defensible space forest thinning demonstration area within the next year. Keep an ear out for opening announcements!

Taos Pines will hold their annual fire preparedness meeting over the July 4 weekend, reminding existing residents and educating new residents on personal and community fire preparedness practices and resources.

Turley Mill HOA is hosting a workshop to teach residents about defensible space.

Brazos Firewise Community will hold a community chipper event and community green slash disposal day over the summer.

And more…

FACNM is proud to support members and leaders leading the charge for fire readiness in their communities. Keep an eye on this page to read all about events and efforts funded through the microgrant award program over the summer. To learn more and become eligible to receive a microgrant award, consider joining the learning network as a member or leader.

Upcoming Events, News, and Resources

May Wildlife Webinars

Over the past 5 years, community volunteers from the Weminuche Audubon Society have conducted a study of bird communities in Ponderosa Pine-dominated forested sites that received wildland fuels reduction treatments. This webinar from the Forest Stewards Guild dives into the effects of these treatments, specifically prescribed fire or shrub-layer thinning, on the composition of bird communities in the southern Rocky Mountains, showing that tree canopy and shrub-layer composition and structure have important influences on the number of bird species present and the predominate feeding and nesting behaviors of the avian community.

Tuesday, May 14, 2024, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. MT: Bird Population Trends and Climate Effects in Southwestern National Parks

Climate change is considered a major driver of recent avian population declines, particularly in the drought-stricken southwestern United States. Predicting how bird populations will respond requires understanding the climatic drivers influencing population density across the region’s diverse habitats. In this webinar from the Forest Stewards Guild, Harrison Jones of The Institute for Bird Populations discusses his research modeling breeding-season densities of 50 bird species in relation to spring and summer drought and the timing of North American monsoon rainfall.

In the second webinar of a yearlong Wildlife and Fire series from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and partners, a panel of experts will discuss monitoring and collaboration at multiple scales at the intersection of fire and wildlife. Topics include the study of how fire and thinning may impact several important soil organisms that support forested wildlife habitat, large-scale monitoring of border infrastructure impacts on wildlife, stories from habitat recovery within large wildfire footprints, collaborations to manage sage grouse and their habitat, and observations on intra-agency differences coordinating wildlife management and fire recovery. Register to learn more about monitoring at multiple scales on May 21!

 

Home Hazard Assessments

Wednesday, May 22, 2024, 1:00-2:00pm: Back to Basics: All About Home Hazard Assessments

In this webinar from Fire Adapted Communities NM, knowledgeable fire and forestry professionals from New Mexico and Colorado will introduce an important fire risk and readiness tool: Home Hazard Assessments (HHAs). Topics covered will include guidance and digital and printed tools to complete HHAs, local partners who can guide the process or travel to complete HHAs on-site alongside property owners and residents, how different Assessment programs are structured, why HHAs are an important fire readiness tool, how county ordinances and insurance providers can influence the need for HHAs, and what opportunities may open up as a result of completing them. Join us on May 22 to learn about Home Hazard Assessment and find out how you can access this tool!

What: Webinar on Home Hazard Assessments (HHAs), hosted by FACNM
When: May 22 from 1:00-2:00pm
Where: Zoom; registration is required and a recording will be available
Who: Open to the community with presenters Porfirio Chavarria of City of Santa Fe Fire, Dick Cooke of Village of Ruidoso, and Kyle McCatty of Wildfire Partners.

An in-person Home Hazard Assessment workshop will be held in autumn 2024 in conjunction with the New Mexico Wildland-Urban Fire Summit (WUFS). Registration for the workshop will be announced beginning in August.

 

Funding Opportunities

Community Catalyst Fund Request for Applications
The Community Navigator Program is a program funded by the USDA Forest Service and launched in 2023 to support historically underserved communities in finding and accessing federal funding and partnership support. The Community Catalyst Fund, offered by Coalitions and Collaboratives, is intended to build community-serving organizational capacity towards climate resilience through access to funding and partnerships with the USDA Forest Service. This funding opportunity is designed to accommodate projects of various sizes and scopes, including: capacity building through training, development and staffing; navigation program delivery; knowledge sharing through stories and resource exchange. Learn more!
Awards range from $10,000-$150,000 and currently run on an 11-month timeline.
Applications are due June 6, 2024 by midnight Mountain Time Zone. COCO will hold a Community Catalyst Fund virtual Q&A session on April 30, 2024 at 2pm MT. Register here. Email cnpinfo@co-co.org with any questions.

Happening tomorrow: A Public Event to Become Fire Adapted!

Ready, Set, Go! A Wildfire Preparedness Workshop

Saturday, April 27th, 10 am – 1 pm
Christ Church Santa Fe, 1213 Don Gaspar

Special Topic - How does the Threat of Fire Affect Your Homeowner’s Insurance?

Join us TOMORROW, April 27, at the family-friendly Ready, Set, Go! Wildfire Preparedness Workshop! Learn from experts, enjoy refreshments, and spend some time in community taking positive steps to build a Fire Adapted Community. Get information and help from the experts from the Fire Adapted New Mexico Learning Network, Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition, Forest Stewards Guild, City of Santa Fe Fire Department, Villages of Santa Fe, Christ Church Santa Fe, and AARP New Mexico. Doors open at 10:00 am and the event runs through 1:00 pm at Christ Church Santa Fe on the corner of Cordova and Don Gaspar. The workshops are free and open to the public and the site offers plenty of free parking.

Refreshments provided by the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Santa Fe.

Learn from the experts about:

Preparing your home for 2024 fire season

  • Conduct your own home assessment OR schedule a FREE assessment, complete with a mitigation work plan

  • Take positive steps that reduce the risk of your home igniting

  • Create a Fire Adapted Community based on your specific neighborhood

  • Understanding home insurance challenges in today’s market

Emergency Preparation

  • Get real-time alerts about wildfires and other emergencies in Santa Fe

  • Create a ‘Go Kit’ with supplies and important family information

  • Prepare an emergency plan for your family

Wildfire Modeling

  • Simtable creates wildfire and smoke simulations to show how fire and smoke spread through communities and how a Fire Adapted Community can reduce risk.

Wildfire Science

  • Learn how a Fire Adapted Community can create a safe and resilient community where fire plays its natural role without destroying lives and property

4th Southwest Fire Ecology Conference - Save the Date!

The Southwest Fire Science Journey: Lessons from the Rearview, New and Unfamiliar Routes, and Promising Horizons

November 18-22, 2024 // Santa Fe, NM // La Fonda on the Plaza

To learn more about the conference, visit https://swfireconference.org

The Southwest Fire Science Consortium, Arizona Wildfire Initiative, and the Association for Fire Ecology invite your participation in the 4th Southwest Fire Ecology Conference this November! This event is a gathering space for aspiring and established professionals to share knowledge, exchange ideas, and discuss the latest advancements in fire ecology research and management with a focus on the future of the southwestern United States. Save the date and plan to attend for a unique opportunity to connect with colleagues in the field and engage in stimulating discussions that will help shape the emerging profession and growing field of fire ecology in this region. The call for proposals is open now and registration opens on July 1; see other important dates.

Call for Proposals is now open

The Call for Proposals is now open for workshops, special sessions, fire circle discussions, oral presentations, and poster presentations. With the conference theme, The Southwest Fire Science Journey: Lessons from the Rearview, New and Unfamiliar Routes, and Promising Horizons, the group seeks to gain a better understanding of the past, present, and future of fire ecology and management in this region. The group invites proposals on topics related to fire ecology, science, and management with a focus on results and lessons learned that are applicable to the Southwest.

Proposal Due Dates:

To submit a proposal or to learn more, visit https://swfireconference.org/cfp/

  • May 15: Proposals Due for Special Sessions and Workshops

  • July 15: Proposals Due for Oral Presentations

  • August 15: Proposals Due for Poster Presentations and Meetings/Activities

The Theme: Past, Present, and Future

Lessons from the Rearview, New and Unfamiliar Routes, and Promising New Horizons

As wildland fire scientists, managers, educators, and students in the Southwest, we find ourselves in an era of rapid change and in need of new approaches, well-planned investments, and meaningful collaborations. Typical land and fire management strategies no longer suffice in the face of escalating challenges posed by more intense fires and the impacts of climate change on precipitation patterns and temperatures. While recent and substantial investments aim to tackle these issues, they often operate on timelines that are misaligned with natural processes. Simultaneously, a cultural shift is imperative—one that recognizes our integral connection to fire-prone lands, embraces the evolving reality of wildfire and ecosystem transition, and equally respects the knowledge held by Indigenous and land grant communities of the Southwest.

Smoke column over I-5 on November 8, day 1 of the 2018 Camp Fire.

At this pivotal juncture, AFE and its partners advocate for a reflective pause to better understand the past, present, and future of the fire science journey in the southwestern US. The integration of past insights with modern approaches is paramount as we invest in creating resilient landscapes and peoples of tomorrow.

The following topics will be of special interest and focus during this year’s conference:

  • Biodiversity and fire

  • Climate adaptation

  • Collaborative and cross-jurisdictional case studies

  • Cultural fire

  • Education and workforce development

  • Fire-adapted communities and Firewise

  • Invasive species and fire

  • Lessons learned in science and management

  • Planning for resilience in uncertain future

  • Post-fire recovery

Wildfire Wednesdays #133: Technical Assistance for Federal Grants

Hi all,

Spring is a time for action when it comes to wildfire mitigation around your home and wildfire resilience in the surrounding landscapes. If you have been interested in taking your wildfire mitigation or landscape resilience implementation to another level, now is a great time to consider applying for funding to achieve these goals. Within the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) there are a variety of funding mechanisms that can support your work. We encourage you to get to know some of these opportunities, because they will only be available for a short period of time.

With that in mind, this Wildfire Wednesday’s is about the Community Navigators Initiative, which is intended to support folks like you with awareness and technical support for accessing federal funding programs.

This Wildfire Wednesdays includes:

  • A recording of the 03/29 webinar about the Community Navigator Initiative

  • Grant News and Updates

  • FACNM sign-up for technical assistance through Community Navigator Initiative

Best,

Gabe

The Community Navigator Initiative

The Fire Adapted New Mexico learning network (FACNM) is working with the Forest Stewards Guild and the Watershed Center, along with several other national and regional nonprofit organizations, is partnering with the US Forest Service on a community navigator initiative. 

The goal of this effort is to connect communities facing wildfire risk and climate change impacts, as well as historically underserved, rural, and low-income communities, to Forest Service funding and partnership opportunities supported by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law). For a snapshot of the programs and activities that received funding through these laws, see our overview of BIL & IRA-supported Climate and Wildfire Resilience Funding Opportunities.

Key aspects of FACNM’s community navigator work include:

  • Developing relationships with communities who may benefit from new funding opportunities and connecting them with sources of technical assistance and support within our networks.

  • Creating tools, trainings, and other resources to support organizational capacity-building.

  • Providing individual technical assistance to help communities identify and apply for funding opportunities and comply with post-award financial management and reporting requirements. 

Another important aspect of our work involves elevating community perspectives and feedback about the barriers that communities face in accessing US Forest Service support and partnership, with the goal of helping vision a more equitable system for all. 

The other organizations working on the Forest Service community navigator initiative include Coalitions and Collaboratives, Hispanic Access Foundation, Federation of Southern Cooperatives, First Nations Development Institute, and the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association.

Grant News and Updates

All federal grant applicants must be registered with SAM.gov. Register NOW as this process can take weeks and is needed to apply for funding opportunities via Grants.gov. If SAM.gov registration issues arise, contact Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) for free assistance.

IRA Forest Landowner Support

Deadline is August 21, 2024

Provides grant opportunities to entities and organizations delivering technical and financial assistance to private forest landowners - including Tribes, underserved landowners, and small-acreage landowners - to participate in emerging private markets for forest resilience and climate mitigation.

NOFO #1 USDA-FS-2023-IRA-FLS-01:

Supporting Underserved and Small-Acreage Landowner Participation in Emerging Private Markets

Last month, the Forest Service announced the award of the first round of this funding. A total of $116 million was awarded to 20 Forest Landowner Support projects (scroll down to the Spring 2024 dropdown under “Forest Landowner Support Awardees”) to provide equitable access to emerging climate markets. Many of the awardees represent or will support underserved landowners located in or providing benefits to disadvantaged communities.


Funding is still available for proposals under $2 million that support the participation of underserved landowners and landowners owning less than 2,500 acres in emerging private markets for climate mitigation or forest resilience. Proposals for NOFO 1 are reviewed in batches on a quarterly basis:

  • Upcoming batch: All proposals received March 1, 2024 - May 31, 2024.

  • Final batch: All proposals received June 1, 2024 - August 21, 2024
    IRA-FLS NOFO1 Frequently Asked Questions (available in Related Documents under the “full announcement materials” dropdown)

NOFO #2 USDA-FS-2024-IRA-FLS-02:

Tribal Access to Emerging Private Markets for Climate Mitigation or Forest Resilience

The Forest Service’s Forest Landowner Support program has a new funding opportunity focused on Tribal access to emerging private markets for forest resilience or climate mitigation (see announcement here). Eligible applicants include: Federally recognized Tribes, Alaska Native Corporations/Villages, and Tribal Organizations.

IRA-FLS NOFO2 Frequently Asked Questions (available in Related Documents under the “full announcement materials” dropdown)

Resources:

Community Wildfire Defense Grant

Funding communities to 1) develop and revise Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs), or 2) implement projects described in a CWPP that is less than 10 years old. Contact sm.fs.usfs_cwdg@usda.gov for more information.

Round 2 applications are currently being reviewed. The agency received 500 applications requesting $965 million, and has about $250 million in available funding. We are waiting on official announcements about Round 2 awards and Round 3 release.

Resources:

Applicants are highly encouraged to coordinate with their State Forestry Agency (or equivalent) during proposal development. See a list of State Forestry Agencies and State Forest Action Plans here.

FACNM Community Navigator Assistance

CALENDAR: Check out our calendar of events for upcoming application deadlines, trainings, informational webinars and other opportunities coordinated through the Watershed Center.

 ASSISTANCE: Fill out a request form to connect with one of our navigators who can help brainstorm proposal and funding ideas, provide information and insight on funding and resources opportunities, review your application, or help with post-award grant management questions.

FEEDBACK: Have you worked with a community navigator and want to share feedback? We’d love to hear from you! Your response will be used to improve our future services.



Upcoming events: FACNM spring webinars!

FACNM’s spring webinar series is happening March-May 2024!

Join us on April 16 and May 22!

Tuesday, April 16, 12:00-1:00pm MT

Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs): What they are, why they matter, and how to write them
Join FACNM for this this 1-hour webinar on Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs)! Gabe Kohler of the Forest Stewards Guild, Abigail Plecki of New Mexico State Forestry Division, and Kenzie Hartt of The Ember Alliance will introduce the basics of CWPPs, discuss the importance of having a local plan with community input, talk about guidelines and best practices, and review resources and assistance for writing a CWPP. Come with your questions to learn more about Community Wildfire Protection Plans and access guiding resources for your CWPP publication or update!

Wednesday, May 22, 12:00-1:00pm MT

Home Hazard Assessments: Back to Basics: how to assess your property’s wildfire hazard, why knowing your risk matters, and how to talk to your neighbors about collective resilience
In this webinar from Fire Adapted Communities NM, knowledgeable fire and forestry professionals from New Mexico and Colorado will introduce an important fire risk and readiness tool: Home Hazard Assessments (HHAs). Topics covered will include guidance and digital and printed tools to complete HHAs, local partners who can guide the process or travel to complete HHAs on-site alongside property owners and residents, how different Assessment programs are structured, why HHAs are an important fire readiness tool, how county ordinances and insurance providers can influence the need for HHAs, and what opportunities may open up as a result of completing them. Join us on May 22 to learn about Home Hazard Assessment and find out how you can access this tool!

Visit the FACNM Events page to learn more about these webinars and to stay up to date on all of our events, including webinars, workshops, member calls, conferences, and more! Recordings of all FACNM webinars can also be found on the FACNM YouTube page.

Wildfire Wednesdays #132: Wildfire Resilience Science Round-Up

Hello and happy spring, FACNM!

Four years ago this week, Fire Adapted Communities New Mexico started this newsletter with the intent to parse through trustworthy sources for relevant fire preparedness information, recommendations, and tips to bring to readers across the Southwest. The content and format have evolved since its inception, but one essential part of the newsletter has remained constant throughout the years: our commitment to be informed of, and able to incorporate, the best available science into our understanding of fire and our relationship to it. Today’s Wildfire Wednesday revisits some science we’ve shared over the years and shares a round-up of some of the most recent regional fire science from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Take care and enjoy the spring blooms,
Rachel

Southwest Research Publications

Sharing the latest wildfire research relevant to the Southwest

Selected articles are presented below based on their relevance and accessibility to the public. For a full round-up of the latest science and to view publications from earlier in 2023, visit the SWFSC website!

Open access articles

 
 
 
 

Throwback to Science from Our Sweet Sixteen

Business resilience and wildfire

Living in a fire adapted area means many things, but what does it mean for businesses and the local economy? In May 2019, the Island Park Sustainable Fire Community in Idaho tackled this question. Their ultimate takeaways were that, in practice, business resilience involves both helping to prepare businesses to operate through wildfire and helping businesses thrive in a fire-prone environment. Wildfires pose a serious threat to a community’s continuity and can have devastating effects on the small businesses that depend on it. Business resiliency and risk mitigation strategies help to defend communities from losses and are especially important for small businesses as they experience the highest risk in proximity to wildfire. Read the full write-up to glean all of these lessons learned.

Events and Resources

In the news

2023-2024 All Hands All Lands Winter Pile Squad: a story about fire, snow, wet boots, and building wildfire resilience in northern New Mexico.

About the squad: this StoryMap from the All Hands All Lands Burn Team discusses the concept of AHAL, the work accomplished by this collaborative burn team over winter 2023-2024, and how this work aligns with the stewardship of fire adapted forests and use of prescribed burning as advocated in the Forest Stewards Guild’s 2021 Policy Statement on Fire, Forest Management, and Communities. In light of the 2022 Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire, federal fire agencies and their partners instituted a strategic pause on all prescribed fire activity, during which they researched and released recommendations on how to make this essential forest and community resiliency tool safer. One key takeaway from the recommendations was the need for larger and more diverse burn teams - that is, more boots on the ground, more eyes on the fire, and more perspectives and a greater breadth of experience contributing to the decision of whether or not to burn. The AHAL burn team fills that gap and makes it possible to meet the spirit and letter of this recommendation during collaborative burns. The winter pile squad, active between November and April, adds capacity to the type of prescribed fire which happens during the cooler months - slash pile burning.

Accomplishments: During the winter season, the Pile Squad assisted with 8 controlled burns, helping to accomplish 1,116 acres of high-priority forest restoration. Much of this work was completed in close proximity to communities and was within the wildland-urban interface (WUI). When not actively burning or patrolling, the pile squad assisted with forest thinning and slash management to prepare for future burns in areas such as the Rio de Las Trampas Forest Council’s Community Forestry plot in between the communities of Trampas and El Valle. They also invested in training and hands-on experiences with city and county fire departments to advance their professional skillsets.

 

Webinars

Friday, March 29 from 12:00-1:00pm: What is the Community Navigators Program?
FACNM is launching its spring webinar series on March 29th! Join Gabe Kohler and Emery Cowan as they introduce the national and regional intent of the Community Navigators Program and discuss how communities across the state can access this resource. Learn more by visiting the FACNM Events page!

 

Learn more and register for the full spring webinar series from FACNM at www.facnm.org/events

 

Wildfire Wednesdays #131: Old Growth Forest

Today’s blog was co-written by Zander Evans and Rachel McCullough, Executive Director and 2024 intern at the Forest Stewards Guild.

Hello FACNM friends,

What do old trees and forests have to do with wildfire? In turns out, there is an important connection! Old growth forests play essential roles in our forests related to wildlife habitat, species diversity, hydrological regimes, nutrient cycles, carbon storage, and numerous other ecological processes. They support rich biodiversity due to the unique structures and habitat features that they develop over long periods of time. Areas of old forest in ecosystems adapted to frequent fire often have patches of large trees interspersed with grassy openings and canopy gaps. However, these forests can be negatively impacted by uncharacteristic (hot, fast-moving, high severity) fire and other impacts of a changing climate. New efforts to conserve and protect old growth have brought these important parts of the forest to center stage.  

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Be well,
-Rachel

The Story of Fire and Old Trees

What is old growth?

Old growth forests can generally be defined as those dominated by large, old trees, both live and dead, standing and fallen, that usually contain many other smaller trees. Old growth forests can occur anywhere, though usually they are found in areas protected from disturbance. These old forests are rare, and unfortunately becoming rarer every day due to natural disturbances like fire, human disturbance where old growth isn’t protected, and the warming and drying climate.

Because old trees and old-growth forests are rare, they add diversity to forest ecosystems with their uncommon characteristics. Old-growth forests have structures such as large trees, large downed logs, and standing dead trees that are not present in young or maturing forests. The unique structures and attributes of old growth forests provide habitat for plant and animal species not found in other forest types. They also play important roles in hydrological regimes, nutrient cycles, and numerous other ecological processes. In addition to the biodiversity, wildlife habitat, hydrologic function, and carbon storage it supports, old growth is valued for recreation, aesthetics, inspiration, or even spiritual reasons. 

Old growth and fire in New Mexico

In Redwood National Park, large live trees are interspersed with decadent dead and down snags and logs.

When you picture ‘old growth’, the image that comes to mind is likely decadent redwood or giant sequoia forests in the Pacific Northwest. Did you know that we also have old trees and old growth forest here in the Southwest? Old tree stands have characteristics such as variable tree size and spacing, accumulation of dead standing and fallen trees, decay, multiple canopy layers, gaps, and dominant large trees. These old trees are far less abundant today than they were in the mid-1800s, before the arrival of the railroad brought clearcut logging and a thriving timber industry. Luckily, New Mexico’s boom-and-bust timber industry had a limited reach due to the challenging terrain, roadless landscape, and associated financial costs, and old growth trees still persist in mid-elevation forested areas across the state.

A 7’ scar, partially healed over, on a large mature ponderosa pine tree in the Pecos Wilderness.

Ponderosa pine trees, a dominant fire-adapted species in New Mexico, begin to develop old growth characteristics between 200 and 300 years of age. They can be identified by their thick bark and fire scars (a place where fire has burned through the bark and damaged a portion of the trunk but the tree has survived and healed over the wound). Characteristics of old ponderosa pines include orange-yellow to occasionally grey bark with large, smooth plates; raised, relatively open, flattened crowns (there is a lot of distance between the ground and the first branch, the branches are not too crowded along the trunk, and the top of the tree is rounded rather than pointed); large-diameter branches; and evidence of past disturbances such as fire scars, lightning-strike scars, or a damaged top. Frequent-fire forests with old trees often have a high canopy and uncrowded understory due to frequent low intensity fire keeping the stands open and preventing shade tolerant competitors from establishing. Keep an eye out on your next stroll through the woods for large-diameter thick-barked trees, especially in drainages and remote areas!

While trees like ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir are resistant to low severity fire when they are old, they can be killed by high intensity wildfires that climb into the forest crown and burn very hot. Ecologically-based stewardship is focused on reducing the risk of high intensity wildfire through thinning and controlled burns – in part to protect these rare, old trees. During controlled burns, old trees are protected by raking litter and duff away from their trunks. This reduces the amount of combustible material around these old trees and helps ensure the low intensity burns don’t smolder and kill their roots or cambium. Restoration work which thins the forest to historic levels can help maturing trees grow larger and become the old trees of the future. Thinning reduces the competition for water and nutrients between trees and helps remaining trees survive drought, grow larger more quickly, and become more resilient to pests, disease, and a hotter and drier climate. 

New Federal Policies to Conserve Old Forests

An amendment to the National Forest Plan

On April 22, 2022, the Biden Administration issued Executive Order 14072, which directs the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of the Interior to define, inventory, identify threats towards, and develop policies to mitigate threats to, mature and old growth forests.

In response, the US Forest Service has proposed a National Forest Plan Amendment that would make long-term resilience the primary objective for forests with old growth characteristics. In addition to ensuring old growth forests persist into the future, the Plan Amendment will foster mature and maturing forests to become the old growth of the future.

An old growth alligator juniper in the Gila National Forest showing a rare hollowed fire scar at the base of its split trunk.

As part of the federal effort to protect old forests, researchers conducted a nation-wide inventory and found 32 million acres of old growth forests. Of that total, 1.3 million acres is comprised of ponderosa pine and 9 million acres is made up of piñon-juniper forests, two dominant forest types in the Southwest. Researchers used that same federal Forest Inventory and Analysis to determine that since the year 2000, we have lost 712,000 acres of old growth to wildfire, 182,000 acres to insects and disease, and 9,000 acres to tree cutting on lands managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Even more worrisome is the prediction that by the end of the century, 90 percent of old-growth forests will be at very high exposure to wildfire-caused mortality and nearly 60 percent will be exposed to drought.  

Ahead of the curve, close to home

While the proposed National Forest Plan Amendment would increase the conservation of old trees nationally, it is unlikely to change management in many forest restoration areas across New Mexico - such as the Santa Fe Fireshed and the Zuni Mountains Landscape - because protection of old and large trees has been a priority in these areas for many years. In 2006, a wide range of groups including federal and state interests and nongovernmental organizations came together to codify their agreement in the New Mexico Forest Restoration Principles. These Principles emphasized the restoration of ecosystem composition, maintenance of watershed and soil integrity, and notably in this context, preservation of old or large trees while maintaining structural diversity and resilience. 

In 2015, after years of ecological monitoring and collaborative forest management, the Cibola National Forest and Grasslands Forest Supervisor made an adaptive management decision that would change the way that trees were marked for restoration thinning. The Old and Large Tree Retention Strategy was implemented for all projects occurring within the Zuni Mountain Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project (CFLRP) area, marking a success in maintaining existing old growth and as well as mature trees that have the potential to develop into old growth.

Learn more about federal policy on mature and old growth forests through this January 2024 webinar recording from the Forest Stewards Guild. In the video, Dr. Zander Evans provides background on what has happened since the issuance of Executive Order 14072 and the next steps in the process. Rhiley Allbee provides an analysis of mature and old growth forest in Collaborative Landscape Restoration efforts. 

Events, Announcements, and Additional Resources

Webinars

FACNM Spring Webinar Series 2024

Friday, March 29 from 12:00-1:00pm: What is the Community Navigators Program?
FACNM is launching its spring webinar series on March 29th! Join Gabe Kohler and Emery Cowan as they introduce the national and regional intent of the Community Navigators Program and discuss how communities across the state can access this resource. Learn more by visiting the FACNM Events page!

Tuesday, April 16 from 12:00-1:00pm: Community Wildfire Protection Plans
Join NM Forestry Division and The Ember Alliance to hear about CWPPs - the basics, importance of, resources and support for, and relevance to county ordinances and homeowners insurance - during the second webinar in FACNM’s spring series.

Wednesday, May 22 from 1:00-2:00pm: Home Hazard Assessments: Back to Basics
Join NM Forestry Division and The Ember Alliance to hear about CWPPs - the basics, importance of, resources and support for, and relevance to county ordinances and homeowners insurance - during the second webinar in FACNM’s spring series.

Review the entire series at www.facnm.org/events or by downloading the flyer!

View our archive of webinar recordings anytime by visiting the FACNM YouTube page!

Cal FSC Webinar Series

April 2024: Fire Use Around the World: Purposes, Principles, Policies, and Practices
In this webinar series from the California Fire Science Consortium, a survey of prescribed fire from around the globe is presented. It focuses on seven topic areas: fuel management; rangeland and landscape management; management of production forests; wildlife management; monitoring and datasets; and ecological restoration and cultural fire.

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Resources for Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) applications

Cycle 3 of the Community Wildfire Defense Grant program will open in mid-2024. For organizations and collaboratives interested in applying, some resources have become available. These resources are subject to change and will be updated throughout the spring and summer as the CWDG deadline approaches.

  • forestrygrants.org provides access to CWDG Cycle 1 and 2 applications that were awarded or scored high.

  • Recordings of grant-writing workshops that provide more context, questions, and conversations are available on the New Mexico Forestry Division Facebook page

  • Wildfire risk

  • Access Forestry Division’s New Mexico Forest Action Plan. The objectives and goals outlined in this document should be referenced in CWDG applications from New Mexico.

Wildfire Wednesdays #130: Preparing for Wildfire Community Preparedness Day

Happy Wednesday, FACNM readers!

With recent gusty winds and grass fires on the eastern plains, FACNM is looking ahead to the not-so-distant summer fire preparedness planning. Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, held annually in the United States and Canada on the first Saturday in May, is a great place to kick off with your own readiness plans. Each year, the campaign actively encourages groups and individuals living in wildfire-prone areas to come together on a single day to raise awareness and reduce wildfire risks by completing projects that can help make their homes and communities safer from wildfire. This year, the day of action will be held on Saturday, May 4. FACNM will be offering ideas, resources, and local opportunities over the next couple of months to help communities prepare for and get involved with Wildfire Prep Day 2024.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Take care as we leap(year) into March!
-Rachel

The Power of Community Action in Wildfire Prep

“As wildland fires increasingly involve residential areas, communities have to take action to help mitigate the potential effects of wildfire. However, residents can be uncertain about what to do, reluctant to get involved, or unclear about the impact they can have. As resources are stretched to cope with suppression and restoration efforts,” local community members and leaders play an increasingly important role in promoting and enabling wildfire preparedness.

Collective action means working together to be prepared, vigilant, proactive, and to prioritize resilience over complacency and face the challenge of wildfires head-on. Community in wildfire preparedness is valuable for many reasons. “As residents, [community members and leaders] understand [their neighbors] and are able to encourage mitigation and preparedness in a number of ways, including:

  • Helping to identify important local issues and create a vision for action.

  • Developing a preparedness strategy that takes community members’ goals into account.

  • Obtaining commitment to act by communicating with other residents and building one-on-one relationships. [This emphasizes] the importance of individuals taking on responsibilities that benefit the community.

  • Mobilizing financial and material resources.” (Lang et al, 2006)

Image courtesy of FireSmart Canada

While individual actions to prepare homes, kids, pets, belongings, and businesses for wildfire are an essential element of fire readiness, coming together as a community to learn, assess collective risk, and reduce fire hazards can motivate and amplify the work of becoming fire adapted.

Wildfire Prep Day Ideas and Resources

Prep Day Dashboards

NFPA
Wildfire Community Preparedness Day - commonly shortened to Wildfire Prep Day - focuses on what you can do in and around your home to help protect against the threat of wildfires. The annual event is organized by the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) and sponsored by State Farm. To help you get ready, NFPA offers:

View the NFPA 2024 Prep Day press release.

Another general toolkit: wildfire.gov offers additional information and resources to prepare for all stages: before, during, and after the fire.

FAC Net
Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network offers a Community Prep Day Menu with a plethora of project ideas for individuals and leaders! Those community organizers who are interested in convening a preparedness event in their neighborhood, city, or county can get inspired by these tried-and-true project ideas:

  • Fuels removal: secure funding and organize with your local contractors to hold a community chipper or green waste day.

  • Assessments: partner with an organization such as your fire department to bring existing assessment programs to your community.

  • Education: work with local fire ecologists, fire personnel, and businesses to host an educational day in the woods, community center, or downtown. Invite your guests to talk about fire science, discuss how fires impact businesses and tourism, and tell their personal wildfire stories.

  • Build awareness: partner with your local fire department to bring an engine to the neighborhood! Post up at a stop sign, local park, or entrance road to create a W.U.I. Checkpoint (Wildland-Urban Interface). This activity is modeled after D.U.I. checkpoints, with a play on words. Give vehicles information about fire preparedness as you stop them.

  • Mitigation fair: create an interactive fair: arrange 5-7 stations on various fire preparedness topics with a call to action - some actionable takeaway for participants - at each station. Attendees will visit different stations to learn how to safely and effectively mitigate wildfire risk on their property.

Learn more and get inspired by reading FAC Net’s 2023 Wildfire Prep Day article: All Projects Big and Small.

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Assessing Community and Individual Risk

Is your community prepared for fire? How can you and your partners improve your resilience? Use the Fire Adapted Communities Self-Assessment Tool (FAC SAT) to find out! FAC SAT was created to help communities assess their fire adaptation efforts and to plan and track their capacity to live safely with fire over time. This tool can be used to assess individual neighborhoods, cities and even large counties. FAC SAT is a PDF document containing a series of questions. Completing the assessment is a four-step process. Detailed information about who should be involved and how long the process takes can be found in the FAC SAT User and Facilitator’s Guide.

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Tailoring the Fire Prep Approach to Your Community

The Fire Adapted Communities Pathways Tool (Pathways Tool) helps users identify a range of fire adaptation practices and resources that research and experience indicate are more likely to work in the places they live and work.

This tool combines decades of research on community wildfire adaptation with practitioner-based knowledge and experience. It helps users identify a community, determine an initial “community archetype” and suggest fire adaptation practices, tools and approaches suited to similar communities. The Pathways Tool then helps users create a ‘pathway’ that is tailored to their community conditions. The tool is also intended to inform progress on fire adaptation across varied regions, identify the most effective programs, grants or assistance for supporting community adaptation, and to demonstrate the diverse needs for wildfire adaptation to promote equity in ongoing fire resilience work.
Learn more, access the Pathways Tool, and watch a recording of the introductory webinar.

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Additional Wildfire Prep Resources

The Community Wildfire Planning Center provides a number of resources for planning the Wildland-Urban Interface, including guidance for adopting defensible space ordinances, opportunities for risk assessments through programs like REALFire, links to State and National WUI planning resources, and more. Explore the CWPC website.

Events, Announcements, and Additional Resources

Webinars

Friday, March 29 from 12:00-1:00pm: Community Navigators Program
FACNM is launching its spring webinar series beginning on March 29th! Join Gabe Kohler and Emery Cowan as they introduce the national and regional intent of the Community Navigators Program and discuss how communities across the state can access this resource.
Keep an eye on the FACNM Events page to learn more and register for additional webinars in the spring series!

Recording available: The Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission Report
Neil Chapman with the Flagstaff Fire Department joined the Forest Stewards Guild in mid-February to explain the formation and process enacted by the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, including the publication and impact of the 2023 Commission Report.

Funding Opportunities

The Department of the Interior has launched a pilot project to help local government agencies convert vehicles for use as wildland fire engines. Agencies serving areas with a population of 25,000 or less are eligible to apply, with applications being accepted through March 21. See the press announcement for details and visit Grants.gov to apply.

In the News

Air Quality
Early this month the U.S. EPA strengthened the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for fine particle pollution (PM2.5). They have released several fact sheets about this rule change, including “Final Updates to the Air Quality Index…”, “Implementing the Final Rule …”, and “Wildland Fire, Air Quality, and Public Health Considerations”. Last week, the EPA, USDA Forest Service and health and land management agencies in Oregon and Washington recognized the important role of prescribed fire for public health and ecosystem resilience in their “Joint Statement of Intent to Cooperate on Prescribed Fire and Smoke Management.”
For some variations on one approach to helping community members mitigate smoke exposure, see the Fire Networks blog post “Cleaner Air, One Filter at a Time: Stories from FAC Net’s Community Clean Air Project.”