Tesuque Valley. Image from Wildfirenetwork.org
Tesuque Valley Firewise
Wildfire Network has been awarded a 2016-2017 New Mexico Association of Counties Wildfire Risk Reduction Program for Rural Communities for our Tesuque Valley Firewise project
The Wildfire Network will provide outreach and guidance to the Tesuque Valley community as prescribed by the Santa Fe County CWPP with a goal of becoming a recognized Firewise Community.
Learn more on the Wildfire Network website.
Home and property assessments using GIS to map neighborhoods down to the parcel level will show the degree of wildfire risk. This information will be available to the public via a website, and also create neighborhood pre-planning map for use by Santa Fe County and specifically Tesuque Volunteer Fire. The assessment system now in use provides data not only on property risk, but also individuals’ activities regarding preparedness (insurance knowledge, evacuation planning, etc) and their thoughts on mitigation and public involvement on planning fire mitigation projects on both public and private lands. This system allows for multiple ongoing assessments over the course of years and will provide hard data on how well our outreach programs are doing in terms of changing attitudes on wildfire prevention and communities learning to become fire adapted.
Utilizing this data, a community meeting will be held to discuss the results of the assessments and introduce potential project types to mitigate risk for inclusion into the required Firewise assessment. They will also be exposed to Fire Adapted Communities principals by Forest Stewards Guild to understand the long term goals of living with fire.