Wildfire Wednesday #97: Landscape Collaboratives and Continual Learning

Hello, Fireshed Coalition readers!

Just as your durability as a fire adapted community lies in the melding of each individual’s specialties, strengths, and diverse perspectives, the capacity of landscape collaboratives comes from the unique viewpoints and experiences that each partner brings to the table. Building, maintaining, and encouraging open communication and the exchange of knowledge in these collaboratives is integral to their success.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features information on:

• What is a good starting point for landscape collaboratives?

• Prioritizing needs and project implementation

• Continual learning - Wildland Urban Fire Summit 2022

• Plus, staying informed with webinars and news

Take care,
Rachel

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Getting started

What is a landscape collaborative?

Landscape management often spans hundreds of thousands of acres and multiple jurisdictions. Forming a landscape collaborative to address this large scope and the resulting diverse needs allows for creativity, adaptivity, and the capacity to tailor approaches to site-specific conditions. A landscape collaborative can be defined as a multi-party group of stakeholders who share a vested interest in the cohesive management of a defined landscape. These groups may identify as a collaborative, a coalition, a cooperative, or use another term altogether.

Image courtesy of Alan Barton, 2022. Pictured: Pacheco Canyon Field Tour.

While partners may be united in their desire to care for the land and communities therein, forming and maintaining a landscape collaborative comes with challenges. Necessary factors to ensure the success of the collaborative are upkeep of social relationships among partners (working relationships), legitimate coordination (effective communication), and the collaborative capacity of the community (investing time, energy, and funding sources).

What is a good starting point for forming a landscape collaborative?

Several elements are generally present for a landscape collaborative to form:

• A shared geographic region

• Common concerns threatening or requiring attention in that region

• Multiple individuals or groups with an interest in addressing these concerns

• Social connectivity between potential partners

• Resources to enable collaboration, including time, personpower, and facilitation

Convening your group:
Begin by talking to potential project partners, those who you have worked with or who you know share an interest in the same type of landscape management. Identify a meeting space and invite these individuals to discuss common goals, concerns, values at risk, and scope of work and focus area. Figure out who will organize and facilitate meetings of the collaborative to maintain momentum. Identify potential funding sources as appropriate. Once you have convened collaborative partners and established that you intend to work together, you can move on to utilizing existing documents to guide your proposed objectives and actions.

Utilizing the 2020 New Mexico Forest Action Plan

Regions into which state Forest Action Plans fall. Click to see how New Mexico aims to conserve and protect its forests over the long run.
Image courtesy of National Association of State Foresters.

States are required by the USDA Forest Service to develop a Forest Action Plan (FAP) on a recurring 10-year plan cycle. New Mexico’s 2020 plan builds upon the first plan developed in 2010.

The EMNRD Forestry Division worked with many partners to create the 2020 New Mexico Forest Action Plan. It provides an assessment of the current conditions of our natural resources and sets forth strategies that address key issues in forest and watershed management in a changing climate.

Key elements in the FAP which aid in the creation of landscape collaboratives are: 1) the vision and next steps for collaboration between agencies and organizations, 2) identification of priority landscapes and regions, and 3) current landscape and watershed conditions and corresponding risks.

Read more about the 2020 New Mexico Forest Action Plan.

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Establishing Priorities

Choosing focus areas

Each stakeholder in the landscape collaborative will likely bring their own distinct priorities to the table. To avoid conflict and find common ground, the group can focus on the following determinants to guide their cohesive priorities.

Places most likely to get funding

Once the collaborative moves from the hypothetical planning phase to the tangible, sources of funding will be imperative for implementation of management activities. Identify potential funding sources such as state agreements and grant opportunities, inquire with others as to what types of projects have been most successful in acquiring funding, and focus on landscapes which have been pre-identified as priorities in planning documents by funding groups (such as the Environment Department, EMNRD Forestry Division and USDA Forest Service).

Priority landscapes

Pull out some maps and identify which areas of interest for your collaborative overlap with county, state, federal, and tribal priority landscapes. Look into the assessments which led to those priority designations (watershed vulnerability, fire hazard, etc.) and determine how those fit in with your collaborative’s idea of landscape risk. Start with the FAP priority landscapes and work from there.

Risk modeling and values at risk

Look for existing geospatial models, data, and published papers which describe the relative risk faced by your landscape of interest. If you have the capacity, consider using existing data or partnering with a group that specializes in risk modeling to produce assessments of risk specific to that area. Identify specific values at risk (homes, infrastructure, recreational and cultural sites, source water, etc.) which may be prioritized for protection.

Environmental clearances

The environmental clearances required prior to project implementation vary by land jurisdiction. On lands owned by the State, land managers must complete heritage surveys and check for Threatened and Endangered species before beginning work on any management activities. On federal lands, managers must go through the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act. Identifying areas which have already received environmental or NEPA clearances accelerates the implementation process, can make your project more competitive for funding opportunities, and should be part of the prioritization process.

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Continual Learning

Wildland Urban Fire Summit 2022:
Community Recovery, Cultivating Resilience

Continual learning and finding spaces which enable exchange of knowledge between land managers are integral to project relevancy, adaptive management, and cross-boundary collaboration. In mid-November, a collaborative group of fire-focused agencies and organizations is presenting the 2022 Wildland Urban Fire Summit (WUFS) in Santa Fe. This event is tailored to land management professionals and is open to the public.

Theme: Community Recovery, Cultivating Resilience
Where: The Lodge at Santa Fe
When: November 16-18, 2022
Cost: $75

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. Learn from local communities adapting to a wildfire environment about the latest techniques, strategies, and resources for wildfire adaptation and resilience. Expand your network of peers and experts to assist you in your fire/disaster resiliency goals.

Summit highlights:

• Optional pre-summit tour on Wednesday, November 16th to Pritzlaff Ranch in San Miguel County (only 30 spots available!)

• Social/networking hour on Wednesday, November 16th

• Group tour of Santa Clara Canyon on Thursday, November 17th (transportation & lunch provided)

• Communications & tools/resources tracts on Thursday, November 17th

• CWPP workshop on Friday, November 18th

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Stay Informed

Webinars

December 6 at 12:00 MST: Southwest Fire Science Consortium presents a webinar on Increases in large wildfire driven nighttime fire activity observed across the conterminous United States with Dr. Patrick Freeborn.

Notable press releases

October 12: In New Mexico, Partners Collaborate to End Siege from Megafires

Post-fire resources

New Mexico Highlands University and partners have released a Post-Fire Resource Hub providing information on post-fire hazards and response operations for the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire.

Wildfire Wednesday #96: What is a Fire Adapted Community?

Communities continuing to be impacted by recent wildfires across New Mexico can find recovery information through the After Wildfire NM website. Additional resources, including documenting your losses, getting debris removed, finding the right contractor, and more are available through United Policyholders and Coalitions and Collaboratives.

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Hello and happy Wednesday, Fireshed Coalition readers!

Living in a fire-prone landscape, sometimes it can feel like you’re being bombarded with a slurry of fire-related acronyms, organizations, and initiatives all vying for your attention - living with fire, fire science consortiums, fire adapted communities, firewise, fire smart, becoming fire ready, fire networks, fire resources. Today’s Wildfire Wednesday aims to help you better become prepared for wildfire by laying out some of the key differences between two primary fire-preparedness initiatives: Fire Adapted Communities and Firewise USA.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features information on:

• Simplifying Firewise and FAC

• Which one is for me?

• Plus, opportunities to Learn More through a wildfire solutions webinar series and TNC’s cultural forestry virtual learning event

Best,

Rachel

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Simplifying Firewise and FAC

What is Firewise?

The Firewise USA recognition program is administered by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and provides a collaborative framework to help neighbors in a geographic area get organized, find direction, and take action to increase the ignition resistance of their homes and community and to reduce wildfire risks at the local level.

Firewise focuses primarily on homeowner and resident fire mitigation before a wildfire. Their recommended mitigation actions include home hardening, fortification of the home ignition zone, organization of a Firewise community board, neighborhood risk reduction activities, and joining the program as a Firewise USA Site.

Through risk assessments, community organization, and individual and collective action, the goal of Firewise is to effectively lower community susceptibility to fire.

Photo courtesy of CalFire

New applications can be completed online at portal.firewise.org. More information on creating a firewise home and community can be found below.

• Defensible Space

• Fire Planning Task Force

• Firewise USA NFPA Map

• State Liaison contacts

What is Fire Adapted Communities (FAC)?

Fire Adapted Communities is a comprehensive framework for community wildfire resilience. It is a way of thinking about how to live better with wildland fire. A fire adapted community is one which understands its risk and takes action during all phases of the wildfire cycle - before, during, and after - to be more resilient. FAC was born out of the 2009 National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy.

View the FAC community resilience framework and suite of actions by clicking on the graphic to the right.

FAC looks beyond residents and individual actions and broadens the scope of what it means to be fire ready.

FAC encompasses the Fire Adapted Learning Network, a peer learning and professional relationship-building initiative. FAC Net connects people to resources and to other practitioners so they can share approaches, tailor strategies for their place, and make a difference in wildfire outcomes on-the-ground. They combine support for on-the-ground project work with professional development, peer learning and coaching, and long-range strategic planning.

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Which one is for me?

Choosing the best program for your community

Firewise and FAC grew out of the same need - to build fire ready communities - and there is a lot of overlap between the two initiatives. Firewise is an important program that supports FAC concepts and wildfire resilience and the two approaches compliment one other.

If you, as an individual or community, are just getting started with your fire adapted journey, Firewise offers an approachable and straightforward suite of actions to build leadership, community cohesion, and to encourage people to mitigate their individual risk.

If you are ready to begin interfacing with your peers, learning more about the science, technology, and lessons learned behind wildfire, and want to access additional resources for education, community programs, and comprehensive resilience through all phases of wildfire, FAC will be a good fit.

Your local chapter - Fire Adapted New Mexico - offers involvement at three levels: Leader, Member, and Affiliate. Each level of involvement is associated with increasing expectations, but also a greater pool of resources. Read about the FACNM membership structure and how to get involved here.

Learning networks are formed to facilitate the exchange of information, spark innovation, increase coordination, and bolster members’ ability to adapt knowledge to local challenges. The purpose of the FACNM network is to create a space for people who want to be part of a network to allow for two-way communication and exchange of ideas and lessons learned.

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Learn More!

Sparking Solutions Webinar Series

Resources for the Future is hosting a three-part webinar series on Meeting the Wildfire Challenge.

Part 1: The Fuels Management Challenge and Opportunity; Examining the role of fuels management in mitigating the impacts and intensity of wildfires
Watch the recording and read about the conversation here.

Part 2: Reducing Risk at the Wildland-Urban Interface; a conversation exploring the benefits and challenges of addressing the WUI problem
October 12th at 1:00 - read about the webinar and RSVP here.

Part 3: Wildfire Risks and Insurance
Details to be announced. Keep an eye on this webpage to learn more.

Cultural Forestry Virtual Learning

In July of 2022, The Nature Conservancy - New Mexico Chapter held a virtual learning event on Enabling Sustainable Traditional and Cultural Forestry Practices. The event illuminated how Forest Councils in New Mexico allow communities to get the wood needed to heat their homes and cook their meals while improving forest health.

You can now read about cultural forestry through this blog from TNC or by watching a recording of the virtual event here.

Updates on the Calf Canyon Hermits Peak Wildfire

A government spending bill was passed Friday (9/30) which provides an additional $2.5 billion in relief aid to those affected by New Mexico’s largest wildfire. The funds will be distributed through FEMA. Read more about it here.

Wildfire Wednesday #95: Reviewing the Review (on Prescribed Fire)

Communities continuing to be impacted by recent wildfires across New Mexico can find resources and more through the After Wildfire NM website. You can learn more about fire adapted communities, including post-fire recovery, through the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network.

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“In fire-adapted landscapes, prescribed fire creates conditions that reduce the intensity of subsequent wildfires, increase suppression success, and reduce firefighter exposure and risk.”

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Happy Wednesday, FACNM community!

On September 8th, 2022, U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore announced an end to the agency’s 90-day pause on prescribed burning, coupled with a 107-page report reviewing the Forest Service’s prescribed burning program practices. The National Prescribed Fire Program Review covers a lot of ground and makes a series of recommendations for how to improve the safety and regularity of prescribed burning. An essential part of being fire adapted is a commitment to learning, and that means changing our behaviors and way of doing things when there is better science or practical knowledge to guide us.

This year has been extremely difficult for so many here in New Mexico and we recognize that there is a lot of trauma surrounding prescribed fire. Understanding the changes being made and how the agency is responding will help us all to better understand our role in living with wildfire.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

• Immediate changes to the USFS prescribed fire program

• Long-term cultural changes to the program

• What it all means for prescribed burning in New Mexico

Take care,

Rachel

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Time to Act - Implementing Change

Why a federal review of prescribed burning?

The National Review Team’s report is relevant to the actions taken by and protocols of the United States Forest Service. Its findings will influence the way that the agency operates in the near- and long-term. At its core, the intent of this review and surrounding dialog is to improve the practice of prescribed burning for fire practitioner, firefighter, and public safety.

As we prepare for wildfires shaped by our climate future, we need a range of tools and skills to make our landscapes and communities more resilient and ready. These tools include fire prevention, home hardening, forest thinning, expanded options for forest stewardship such as Forest Councils, and also prescribed fire and wildfires which are managed for ecological benefit.

Before learning more about the contents of the national prescribed fire review, please take a moment to learn about the importance, and success, of prescribed burning as a tool in the land management and resilience toolbelt.

Click to read about the field tour’s objectives

How is the Forest Service rethinking its approach to prescribed fire?

The proximate cause of the Forest Service’s 90-day prescribed fire pause and policy review was the 2022 Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire and other escaped burns, but the root cause is rapidly changing environmental conditions - drought, extreme wind events and record temperatures - and how they impact fire behavior. These conditions lay the foundation for catastrophic wildfires and may increase the probability of escaped prescribed burns, thus affecting fire implementers’ perception of risk and necessitating an update to how they operate.

Returning fire to fire-adapted - and starved - landscapes is a balancing act, one that requires land managers “be clear about the risk of conducting prescribed burning operations as well as the cost of delaying or avoiding treatments.” The National Prescribed Fire Program Review provides guidance for that necessary update to the prescribed burning Modus Operandi.

Immediate changes to the Forest Service’s approach to prescribed burning include:

1. Improved decision-making processes

An Agency Administrator is the individual who represents a specific agency on a fire. While this person may be in an assigned position, such as the District Ranger or Forest Supervisor, other employees, such as fire staff, can also complete training and a task book which gives them the AA qualification.

• Instead of authorizing a broad window of time (say a 1- to 2-week period) for a planned prescribed fire, agency administrators (the official responsible for the management of a functional area) will authorize ignitions only for the Operational Period (24 hours) for the day of the burn. For prescribed fires requiring multi-day ignitions, agency administrators will authorize ignitions on each day. Moderate and high complexity burns now require that an agency administrator to be present on-site.

• Burning at the upper end of the prescription comes with heightened risk and should be avoided. Some practitioners start burning earlier in the day to avoid bumping up against the upper end of the prescription (a set of conditions that considers the safety of the public and fire staff, weather, and probability of meeting the burn objectives), but burn parameters have generally been reaching the upper prescription limits earlier as the air and fuels (duff, grass, twigs, logs, etc.) dry out faster than expected.

• Recognizing the challenges presented by climate change. As temperatures rise and precipitation patterns shift across the United States, conditions for prescribed fire will change and the potential for fire escapes will grow. Extreme heat events, along with droughts that are more prolonged and severe, will bring less soil moisture, drier fuels, and more potential for undesirable fire behavior. The agency is working to update necessary trainings more broadly, but one essential training element will be the inclusion of the effects of climate change on fire and fuels, drought, and modeling tools.

• Go/no-go decision-making inflection points will be standardized across the agency for crews making the call on whether or not to proceed with prescribed burns.

• Existing and future burn plans will be reviewed prior to putting fire on the ground and a technical reviewer must re-approve that the plans reflect current conditions and burn complexity. Additionally, the individuals responsible for organizing and leading burns (burn bosses) will evaluate landscape, weather, and crew conditions immediately prior to ignitions to document that they still meet burn plan specifications.

2. Standardizing practices

• Communication and reporting, both before and after the burn, will be standardized across the agency to ensure consistency and to minimize the chance of miscommunication or lack of mutual understanding.

• Briefings, which happen immediately prior to a prescribed burn being lit, will now follow a standard procedure. The review of and report on incidents which are declared wildfires will now be standardized, improving current tracking systems and access to recommendations.

3. Investing in technology for improved planning

• The Forest Service aims to incorporate PODS (Potential Operational Delineations) as a modeling tool for both wildfire response and vegetative/fuels management planning.

4. More precise risk analysis

“After more than a century of fire exclusion and under a rapidly changing climate, fire behavior has changed, and damage from wildfire is increasing. With more than a century of forest and fire science to build on, scientists, managers, and communities are refining management options for reducing risks to communities and ecosystems.”

• Fuel conditions on adjacent lands will be considered, as this can reduce a practitioner’s ability to control a fire that moves (escapes) beyond the planned burn area.

• More consideration will be given to the impact of long-term drought on prescribed fire behavior since the resulting conditions from drought have been cited as a contributing factor in several reviews of escaped prescribed fires. Learn more about the relationship between climate change and wildfire in this peer-reviewed article or through the associated StoryMap by clicking on the picture to the right.

5. More collaboration

• Failure to communicate and coordinate with neighboring landowners carries it with significant risk. Building off of number 4, neighboring landowners may have good information that they can share on fuels or other environmental conditions which are relevant to prescribed burners. Working with neighbors also provides social license and improved local response in the event of an escape.

• The review found that “current agreement policies and contracting laws can keep (USFS districts) from finding the resources they need to carry out complex, large-scale, or long-duration prescribed fires”. One solution to this shortfall is increasing avenues for external partners to implement prescribed fire across boundaries by reducing barriers to collaborative prescribed burning with State agencies and others.

6. Transparency

• Public trust means public transparency, including coordinating with partners and communities and being upfront about why and where prescribed burns are conducted.

• In response, the Forest Service aims to implement a large-scale messaging and education campaign highlighting the importance of prescribed fire, including transparent communication related to risk, uncertainty, and complexity.

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Changing the Culture

Long-term initiatives to improve the culture of prescribed burning

In addition to the immediate recommendations laid out above, the Forest Service is pursuing initiatives which will provide better education, training, and improve the culture of the agency’s prescribed burning program.

Long-term changes to the Forest Service’s approach to prescribed burning include:

1. Development of a national strategic plan for prescribed fire implementation. The plan will include timing and command structure for ignitions and the logistics to prioritize and mobilize resources (crews, equipment, etc.) for both suppression and prescribed burning activities by December 15, 2022.

2. In collaboration with partners, identification of a strategy for dedicating crews to hazardous fuels work and mobilizing them across the country to support the highest priority hazardous fuels reduction work by December 15, 2022.

3. Establishment of a Western Prescribed Fire Training curriculum by January 1, 2023. This curriculum will be built with the interagency fire and research community, Tribes, and other partners to expand on the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center (NIPFTC) headquartered in Tallahassee, Florida

The report’s findings may be summarized in the context of adaptive management: as a learning organization, the Forest Service can reduce risks by

• intentionally incorporating learning from past escaped prescribed fires,

• expanding available resources and tools for prescribed burning,

• enhancing training opportunities, and

• clarifying the use of reviews of prescribed burns that have become declared wildfires.

These risk-reduction actions will happen concurrently with agency use of congressionally-approved funding and resources to “scale up fuels and forest health treatments - including prescribed fire - in a way that is safe while also recognizing that risks cannot be fully removed from this land management activity.”

“Instead of creating a culture of risk avoidance, the U.S. Forest Service needs to move forward with clarity about what they can control.”

The recommendations outlined above could create more administrative hurdles which may make it harder for the agency to implement prescribed fire in New Mexico and across the West. While fire managers and decision makers are reevaluating the risk of prescribed burning and adopting the findings to increase their odds of success, the agency also recognizes that the “culture will need to change to elevate the priority of prescribed fire and adopt an all-hands approach to using this central tool for fuels reduction and forest resilience.”

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Local Impacts

How the report’s recommendations will be felt across New Mexico

While the National Prescribed Fire Program Review refers specifically to changes within the USDA Forest Service, there are ripple effects beyond the federal sphere. Local communities, even those which previously supported the use of prescribed burning, have become more risk-adverse following recent escaped fires. State Land agencies have put their own holds on certification of prescribed burning on State Land Office or private lands. These changes to the greater culture of prescribed fire will take far longer than 90 days to settle, and land managers across all jurisdictions will have to win back public trust with both words and action.

What can be done in the Land of Enchantment to make “prescribed burns a safer and more effective tool”?

1. Build a robust multi-agency burn workforce

2. Use better planning and modeling tools

3. Adapt projects for a changing climate

Collaboration
These steps are dependent not just on incorporating lessons learned into future efforts, but on taking an ‘all-hands’ approach to prescribed fire by investing in partnerships across boundaries, organizations, and thought patterns. A collaborative approach to burning creates room for diverse perspectives, voices, and ability which serve to widen the lens of both capacity and situational awareness. Eytan Krasilovsky with the Forest Stewards Guild captured this sentiment when he stated that management of our forests comes down to “a community of practitioners. I think the events of this year just really solidify that we need to be communicating and working together.” One step in the right direction is that the agency now seeks to expand training not only for Forest Service staff but also local community members who could be certified to participate directly in prescribed burns.

“For the Forest Service to successfully confront the Wildfire Crisis Strategy, agency culture will need to change to elevate the priority of prescribed fire and adopt an all-hands approach to using this central tool for fuels reduction and forest resiliency.”

It is recognized that prescribed fire needs to change, given an increasing number of unprecedented weather events, such as the heat wave and extreme winds that caused the Gallinas-Las Dispensas prescribed burn to escape and become Hermits Peak Wildfire, which can be at least partially attributed to climate change. Prescribed and cultural burning is also still one of the best tools available to land stewards to reduce the hazard of future catastrophic wildfire.

As people across New Mexico, federal and otherwise, commit to active management of the West’s forests, our commitment needs to include returning fire to the landscape and working with the human communities who live there.

FACNM and the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed stand by these and other policy and practice changes that make prescribed burning safer and more effective. Prescribed fire remains the quintessential tool for reducing wildfire risk and creating resilient fire-adapted landscapes. While success stories are not always highlighted, there are plenty of examples of this tool working as intended.

How the report is being interpreted elsewhere

People across the West and the Nation at large are taking note of the Forest Service’s review and are talking about how it may change prescribed fire landscape culture and operations at large. Click on the articles below to jump into the discussion.

Read the article from the LA Times

Read or listen to the short Marketplace Report

Wildfire Wednesdays #94 Counteracting wildfire misinformation

Interested in reading more?

The Coalition has developed resources specifically anchored in the best available science for this landscape.

Check out these related materials:

• Briefing Paper series,

• the 2019 Common Ground Workshop,

• our FAQs,

• learn about the 2020 Medio Fire,

• and watch a video on the recent Pacheco Canyon Virtual Learning Exchange.

There is misinformation about wildfire, ecosystem health, fire mitigation and forest resilience in Santa Fe. Misinformation about wildfire in Santa Fe has led to significant roadblocks to mitigation and resilience projects that address our wildfire crisis. With climate change exacerbating the consequences of each wildfire year, the outcome of this misinformation could come at high environmental an community cost. The Coalition stands with the consensus among scientists summarized in the recently released Jones et al. (2022) paper and associated table. The paper and table address misinformation about wildfire and debunks prominent examples of wildfire misinformation.

Click on any of the photos or text below to access the PDF versions of this research.

“Wildfire mitigation requires accurate information about drivers of wildfire change, the impacts to society and ecosystems, and actions that alter trends. Misinformation confuses people about the causes, contexts, and impacts of wildfire and substantially hinders society’s ability to proactively adapt to and plan for inevitable future fires. (Jones et al. 2022)”.

Click on the image to access the PDF version of this research and the associated reference pages for the webtable.

Wildfire Wednesdays #93: BACK TO sCHOOL

Hi Fireshed community,

It is normal to feel overwhelmed and somewhat unsure about how to discuss difficult and potentially traumatic subjects like the 2022 wildfire season. Many New Mexicans were personally affected or know someone who was affected by wildfire this year. With kids heading back to school this August, now may be an important opportunity to talk with the youngest in our community about the ecological role of wildfire and how wildfire behavior is changing. To support these important conversations, this Wildfire Wednesdays includes information on:

• Teaching: how to talk about fire ecology - the science behind wildfire

• Preparation: how to get your kids ready for wildfire

• Coping: how to talk to kids about upsetting news and current events

• Plus a wildfire graphic novel and coloring book for kids or the young at heart, upcoming wildfire recovery events in the Mora and San Miguel areas, and more!

We encourage you to please share these resources with parents and educators in your network to help them with this difficult subject.

Best,
Gabe

Teaching: breaking down fire ecology

What is fire?

Before we can talk about how fire spreads, we need to understand what fire is. We can feel its heat, smell its smoke, and see its light, but fire is actually not a solid, liquid, or gas. Rather, it is the result of a chemical reaction called combustion. Combustion is the process by which a substance called fuel reacts rapidly with oxygen and gives off heat. There are three components needed for ignition and combustion to occur. A fire requires fuel ­to burn, air to supply oxygen, and a heat source to bring the fuel up to ignition temperature. Heat, oxygen and fuel form the fire triangle. Fire’s heat is the result of super-excited molecules releasing energy in the form of heat as they break and reform their atomic bonds. Smoke is the result of organic material in the fuel being heated to the point that it converts from a solid to a gas. Light is the result of that released energy incandescing, or glowing, and giving off visible light waves at a very high temperature.

How does fire spread?

“After combustion occurs and a fire begins to burn, there are several factors that determine how the fire spreads. These three factors include fuel [what burns], weather [such as temperature and how dry the air is], and topography [the flatness (such as a grassland) or steepness (such as a mountain slope) of the ground]. Depending on these factors, a fire can quickly fizzle or turn into a raging blaze that scorches thousands of acres” (How Wildfires Work).

Fire ecology: the study of fire as a natural part of the ecosystem

Learning about the Calf Canyon Hermit’s Peak Wildfire

Use this interactive story map from the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute to learn about and teach your young ones about the largest wildfire in New Mexico's recorded history and its lasting impacts.

To view the story map, click here.

Preparation: getting ready for wildfire

Preparing an evacuation kit

When a wildfire is spreading quickly and your family receives orders to evacuate, your safety is the top priority. This means you probably won’t have time to go through the house and decide what you want or need to take with you, you will just need to get moving. One key to readiness is “having an emergency supply kit ready to grab on the go, long before a wildfire or other disaster occurs. Keep it easily accessible so you can take it with you when you have to evacuate [and] plan to be away from your home for an extended period of time.” Follow the link to learn how to assemble your kit.

Making a family plan

Figure out before a disaster strikes how the whole family will react. Know how you’ll contact one another and reconnect if separated, establish a family meeting place that’s familiar and easy to find, consider the specific needs of your household, and practice ahead of time! Learn how to make a plan today.

Staying up-to-date on wildfires near you

Now that you’re prepared with an evacuation kit and a plan, you need to know where to find accurate information on a wildfire burning nearby.

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) maintains InciWeb, a website where official responding agencies such as the US Forest Service and NM Forestry Division can announce new wildfire ignitions and update wildfire incidents with location, containment status, acres burned, and evacuation notices. Search by incident name or find an incident on their national map (InciWeb).

New Mexico Fire Information (NM Fire Info) is an interagency effort by federal and state agencies to provide timely and accurate fire and restriction information for the entire state. The aim is to maintain one website where the best available information and links related to wildfire and restrictions can be accessed. Find updates on wildfires in the state, links to other helpful sites, and information on fire restrictions and smoke management (NM Fire Info).

VISIT INCIWEB

VISIT NM FIRE INFO

Coping: how to talk about challenging subjects

“After disturbing incidents like… natural disasters, feelings of panic and fear increase. Extensive news coverage and posts on social media can heighten those feelings, especially in kids and teens. As adults grapple with how to move forward in the aftermath these events, it's important to help kids and teens process them, too.” Follow these General Guidelines for helping your kid(s) cope and find security in the face of upsetting current events.

During and following a wildfire, “routine is disrupted and one's sense of security is undermined. Families and communities should not underestimate the accumulative effects of evacuation, displacement, relocation, and rebuilding”. Talking to your child, 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 a wildfire. Visit this link to learn how to help children impacted by wildfires.

Additional resources

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).