By Hannah Grover
With more than half of New Mexico experiencing extreme drought conditions, officials throughout the state are concerned about this year’s fire season.
Bernalillo County and its partners hosted a wildfire preparedness town hall on Thursday at the Los Vecinos Community Center in Tijeras.
While the federal funding cuts and reductions in staff have created concerns that there may not be enough wildland firefighters this year, Brad Tausan, the Cibola National Forest and National Grasslands fire management officer, said the agency currently is fully staffed and has the resources in place to fight fires this summer. Those resources include a helicopter.
He said the total number of personnel in the Sandia Ranger District is “roughly around 25 people.”
Meanwhile, Bernalillo County Fire and Rescue has about 20 to 25 certified wildland firefighters on staff that are ready to respond to fires in the East Mountains, according to Bernalillo County Fire Rescue Wildland Coordinator Joshua Skrondahl.
Tausan expressed concerns about the drought conditions.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the drought conditions right now. We’re sitting at an extreme drought…You can probably go outside and see that and feel that within the air. And so we’ve elevated our fire danger to ‘high’ just recently, within the week,” he said.
He said the fire outlooks for the month of May show the Rio Grande Valley as having “significant fire potential.” The East Mountains area is not quite at that level yet, Tausan said, but could get there in June.
Steps homeowners can take to reduce wildfire risks
With the fire danger increasing, officials say there are steps individual homeowners can take to help firefighters and to reduce the likelihood of their house burning.
Skrondahl said about 70% of the time when a home catches fire during a wildfire event it is because of flying embers that can, under the right conditions, travel for more than a mile.
“They come in and they find little places, little penetrations, old wood, whatever it may be, and they embed themselves in there, and then start a small fire, and then start larger fires,” he said.
Homeowners can take steps to reduce the chance that an ember will ignite their house. Those could be painting trim around doors and windows, maintaining wood siding, using stucco siding rather than wood and changing from cedar-shank roofs to less flammable materials.
He said changing to more fire-resistant construction materials will give homeowners the most bang for their buck when it comes to protecting their house from wildfires.
He said even small changes like sealing gaps and ensuring there are screens on eave vents can make a big difference.
Homeowners can also create what is known as defensible space around their houses. That involves removing vegetation within five feet of the home. That vegetation can be replaced with gravel or concrete or even bare soil.
Between five and 30 feet of the house, the vegetation should be primarily low-growing herbaceous plants. Skrondahl said that is an area where yuccas can be used in the landscaping.
When it comes to trees, he said lower branches should be removed and vegetation directly under trees should be removed as well. He said trees should look a bit like a lollipop.
He also encouraged people to create vegetation islands that have fire breaks between them.
Why does it matter to create defensible space?
When a fire happens, the firefighters will look at whether houses are made from more fire resistant construction materials and if the property owners have created defensible space around their homes. Those factors will determine whether the firefighters choose to defend the property.
If a homeowner has done a good job creating defensible space and has used fire resistant construction materials on their residence, the fire department will not need to dedicate resources to defending that property.
In the case where minimal work is needed, the fire crews may be able to push a wildfire around the property.
Houses that are made from combustible materials such as cedar-shank roofs and that have fuels near them and little defensible space are unlikely to be saved during a wildfire.
“We can’t commit resources to something like that. It’s just too difficult to defend. We have to defend and save savable property,” Skrondahl said. “What we will do on some of these is once the fire front passes, we’ll go back in and save what we can and see what we can do from there.”
Many people in the East Mountains have gates on their property, including gates that need an access code.
People who have those gates can call the non-emergency dispatch number (505)798-7000 and provide the gate code to their property in advance. That will allow first responders to quickly access the property in case of any type of emergency.