Pile burning in the Santa Fe National Forest (Week of Jan. 5)

The Española Ranger District of the Santa Fe National Forest plans to burn piles in the Tesuque Creek area Jan. 8-9th (snow dependent).

After igniting the piles, fire crews will continue work to secure and then patrol the piles over the weekend and beyond. Patrols will continue until no smoke or heat are detected on the unit from hand cold-trailing by on-the-ground crews or infrared technology. The burn will not be declared out until infrared flights detect no heat.

To mitigate smoke impacts, ignitions will end around by mid-afternoon if ventilation is poor.

The purpose of this pile burn is to increase resiliency of the forest to high-severity wildfire as well as drought and insect and disease outbreaks (such as the visible recent Douglas-fir tussock moth outbreak). Projects like this will also protect our water from the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed and surrounding watersheds that are currently threated by high-severity fire.

Want to learn more?

Photos from collaborative pile burning in previous years in the Santa Fe National Forest (in Pacheco Canyon). Photo Credit: Forest Service

Click below to read the Forest Service news release:


Wildfire Wednesday #174: Lessons from Large Urban Conflagrations

Historically, most wildfires in the United States occurred between May and November with peak fire season happening in August when conditions are hottest and driest. However, as weather patterns change, temperatures rise, drought events increase, and pests, disease, and invasive species make forests more vulnerable, wildfires outside of the traditional fire season have become more common over the past two decades. Since 2017, some of the most destructive fires in the western U.S. have burned outside of that typical fire season (Thomas Fire, CA; Marshall Fire, CO; Smokehouse Creek Fire, TX; Palisades/Eaton Fires, CA). Many of these have been fueled by unseasonable or long-lasting (and often record-breaking) heat and strong winds, causing explosive fire growth. Recovery from these fires takes years to decades and the landscape, and the communities impacted, will be permanently changed.

As we approach the one year anniversary of the LA conflagrations (the Palisades and Eaton Fires) and consider the changing reality of large destructive fire events, the question becomes what we can learn from past fires - how they burned, how fire personnel and emergency managers responded, how communities faired, and how we have or have not been able to recover - to inform and improve how we live with and prepare for fire in the future.

This Fire Friday features:

Have a peaceful and restful end to your year,
Rachel

Lessons from recent large urban conflagrations

One key aspect of what made the 2025 LA urban conflagrations - the Palisades and Eaton Fires - so intense is that they burned under red flag conditions (strong winds, low relative humidity, and dry fuels) which indicate an increased potential for extreme fire behavior and rapid fire growth. During the first five hours following ignitions, these fires were burning under environmental conditions which exceeded the extreme fire behavior thresholds of 2-minute sustained wind speeds exceeding 20 mph, peak 5-second gusts exceeding 30 mph, and relative humidity below 15%. These conditions meant that vegetation was dry and ready to burn and very high winds pushed the fires further and faster than firefighters could respond.

Anne Cope, an Institute for Business and Home Safety staffer who helped write the findings report on the LA Conflagrations, notes that “each wildfire event reminds us communities must prepare for the few days a year of dry hot winds — not the calm of everyday life. When fires ignite on the worst days, these winds push embers, flames and heat into entire neighborhoods. But the science is clear – when communities work together, we can disrupt the path of conflagration.” Below are some key takeaways from that report which may inform or reinforce our preparedness priorities and actions.

 

Individual preparedness

  • Nearly all aspects of the potential for structure ignition fall into two primary categories: the building materials used to construct the exterior of the structure and the intensity of fire exposure from the surrounding environment. The latter is closely correlated with connective fuels and the distance to surrounding fuel (e.g., decks, shrubs, sheds, or structures). (pg. 18)

    • When connective fuels allow the fire into close proximity of the structure, vulnerable components - windows, decks, and open eaves - provide the initial ignition points that determine a structure’s outcome. (pg. 57)

Probability of a structure remaining undamaged with an increasing number of resilient building component characteristics, showing an increasing trend in survival likelihood with greater mitigation. Analysis based on DINS data from both the Palisades and Eaton Fires.

  • Mitigation only works as a system, and partially executed mitigation strategies allow fire pathways and vulnerabilities to persist. Most homes exposed in the Palisades and Eaton Fires featured at least one resilient component, with noncombustible siding and Class A roofs being the most common (enhanced resistance to radiant heat and direct flame contact) and ember-resistant mesh screens on vents being the least (left these openings vulnerable to ember exposure). Many structures also had inconsistent resilience in different parts of their Zone 0 (e.g. a noncombustible pathway around three sides with vegetation and flammable furniture on the fourth side) which increased their vulnerability to near-structure flame exposure. These partial resilience improvements left major vulnerabilities, highlighting that resilience must be evaluated as a system of building components and defensible space. A structure is only as resilient as its weakest component. (pg. 45)

    • As the number of resilient components increases (e.g. noncombustible siding, Class A roof, double-pane windows, and enclosed eaves) the probability of experiencing no damage increases from 36% to 54%, demonstrating effectiveness of using systems-based home-hardening. These findings underscore the importance of establishing minimum performance requirements through parcel-level building codes.

    • This parcel-level approach is especially important in typical suburban neighborhoods, where maintaining more than 30 ft of separation between structures is often not feasible. Where structural density cannot be reduced in suburban environments, the building materials and connective fuels—especially those closest to the structure—become even more important. (pg. 4)

The zone immediately surrounding the home (Zone 0) is the most impactful place to make improvements.

  • Some types of fuel commonly observed within Zone 0 can unexpectedly threaten structures under extreme fire conditions. In the communities impacted by the Eaton and Palisades Fires, trash bins, hot tubs, furniture, vegetation, and more within 5 feet of homes created ignition pathways (bins caught fire which then ignited the adjacent structure) and caused damage. In these cases, the primary combustible component was not the plastic bin itself but rather its contents inside. (pg. 32)

 

(a) Partially consumed trash bin with consumed contents. (b) Embers accumulated on top of a trash bin with holes created by embers. These holes create pathways for fire to reach the contents of the bin. (c) Consumed trash bin that ignited an adjacent garage as it burned.

 

  • No plant, regardless of its flammability rating, is fireproof, and even well-maintained, well-hydrated vegetation can be rapidly dried to the point of ignition due to the intensity and duration of fire exposure during the extreme fire behavior scenarios of a conflagration. This burning vegetation close to homes can then compromise the building’s integrity when combined with other forms of exposure. (pg. 30)

  • Many studies have shown that fences built out of combustible materials, such as wood or latillas, can enable fire to move through communities; the use of noncombustible fences (e.g. metal or chainlink) reduces the potential for fire spread, particularly for fences that touch the home. However, in LA vegetation that caught fire was observed growing up or through noncombustible fences, reducing or eliminating the resilient effect of the noncombustible fence material. (pg. 35)

  • Even if homeowners reduce fuels in the zone that is 5-30 feet away from the home (Zone 1), structures with dense fuel coverage - greater than 25% - in Zone 0 are almost guaranteed to sustain damage or destruction (probabilities exceeding 87%). Overall, reducing fuel coverage both in Zone 0 and Zone 1 to less than 25% produces a meaningful reduction in the probability of damage or destruction to structures. (pg. 55)

    • Resilient building components offer limited benefit when heavy fuel loads remain close to the structure. (pg. 57)

 

Community preparedness

  • Firefighter effectiveness is strongly impacted by community design. (pg. 26)

    • Neighborhoods with high structure density and limited separation distances are likely to experience multiple near-simultaneous ignitions, quickly overwhelming suppression capacity. Communities with tight structure spacing and dense connective fuels have amplified fire risk exposures between homes and reduced effectiveness of defensive actions (fire suppression and structure protection).

    • The presence of defensible space increases the effectiveness of defensive actions (e.g. during the Eaton Fire, homes threatened in Kinneloa Mesa were reported to have good defensible space, which allowed Los Angeles County Firefighters to effectively defend them).

Structure-to-structure fire spread in Altadena, California following the Eaton Fire.

  • While parcel-level mitigation is necessary, it is not always sufficient to prevent large-scale loss, particularly under extreme fire weather conditions or in densely built neighborhoods. Post-conflagration studies have shown that structure separation, connective fuels, and building materials are the three central pillars of risk, with structure separation and connective fuels controlling the intensity of heat exposure and building materials defining a structure’s capacity to resist it. (pg. 51)

    • Even structures with 4 resilient building component characteristics but which have less than 10 ft of separation have a greater than 50% chance of being damaged. When the space between structures is less than 10 ft, the likelihood that a fire will exploit the weakest link in a structure greatly increases, often overwhelming the protective benefits of one or two resilient building features. At such tight spacing, if one building ignites, it is almost certain that wind driven flames will extend the full 10 ft downwind to touch the adjacent structure. (pg. 53)

    • When structure spacing is greater than 30 ft, the probability of no damage increases to 66% with those same 4 resilient building component characteristics. Adding either enclosed eaves or double pane windows to the resilient system (on top of noncombustible siding and a Class A roof) increases the probability of no damage.

Percentage of total fire size over the first four days of development for Palisades and Eaton Fires, shown alongside wind gust data representing general wind patterns in the area.

The most dramatic fire growth corresponds with periods when 5-second wind gusts exceeded 40 mph, highlighting the direct relationship between extreme wind activity and fire spread. Once the wind subsided, fire growth slowed, not only due to the loss of wind-driven oxygen supply, ember transport, and flame extension, but also because suppression efforts became more effective both from the air and on the ground.

  • Houses oriented downwind of the fire were consistently damaged or destroyed at higher rates than structures in crosswind or upwind exposures (due to diminished intensity of heat transfer in the upwind and crosswind directions); however, structures at all wind exposure orientations remain highly vulnerable when spacing between structures is minimal. (pg. 51)

 

Overall takeaways

  • Parcel-level resilience must be applied as a comprehensive system and paired with reductions in connective fuels at the neighborhood scale to meaningfully limit structure loss during wind-driven built-environment conflagrations. (pg. 58) To reduce overall suburban conflagration risk, parcel-level measures must be complemented by community-level actions—particularly efforts to reduce structural density and connective fuels. (pg. 4)

  • In urban conflagrations, damage is driven by the intensity of the fire, driving conditions (e.g. strong winds), and the fire’s ability to access an ignition pathway from one structure to another. These ignition pathways are created through either localized flame exposures that exceed the tolerance of building materials or through ember intrusion into unmitigated openings.

  • A systems-based approach that combines resilient construction, strategic fuel management, and community-wide mitigation is essential for wildfire resilience.

  • Spacing between structures (homes) and connective fuels, combined with environmental factors like wind speed and direction, are the two biggest driving factors which determine whether fire moves between homes, becoming a conflagration, or where structures are defensible.

  • When creating separation between structures isn’t possible, homeowners must take key steps. When homes featured 4 hardened components – a Class A roof, noncombustible siding, double-pane windows and enclosed eaves – the likelihood of avoiding wildfire damage was 54%, regardless of how close homes were to one another.

  • Homes with fuel covering more than 25% of Zone 0 faced an 87-100% chance of damage or destruction. That includes trash cans, patio furniture, and shrubs.

Read the full report
 

Upcoming Opportunities and Additional Resources

PNM Wildfire Awareness Town Halls

East Mountains Town Hall - 1/12, 5PM Ruidoso Town Hall - 1/15, 5PM
Los Vecinos Community Center Ruidoso Convention Center

Join PNM at an upcoming community event focused on wildfire safety and learning more about their Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) process. These gatherings are designed to share critical information, local resources, and practical tips to help protect your home and neighborhood.

PNM Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) map of high fire risk areas that may experience a PSPS.

 

PNM Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) map of high fire risk areas that may experience a PSPS.

 

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National Forest Foundation - Matching Awards Program (MAP): Connecting People to Forests

January 22, 2026: Deadline for Round 1 2026 MAP Applications

MAP funds projects that inspire participants to be personally involved in caring for their public lands. NFF requires that all MAP projects include three elements: community engagement, hands-on stewardship activities completed by the engaged community members, and a direct benefit to the National Forest System. Nonprofit organizations, Tribal governments and organizations, and universities are eligible to receive MAP grants.

View the Round 1 Request for Proposals (RFP)

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Rocky Mountain Research Station - Science You Can Use in 5 minutes

Trees in Distress: Prefire drought increases postfire mortality

Looking at four tree species—lodgepole pine, white fir, Douglas-fir, and ponderosa pine—a study led by a professor with the University of Montana and a research ecologist with the Forest Service investigated whether surviving trees were more likely to die within 5 years of a fire if there was an extreme drought before the fire. They found given the same level of crown scorch, severe prefire drought made a tree 78 percent more likely to die after a fire. Therefore, into the future, western forests that have thick barked tree species may become less resilient to fire because of increasing drought stress.

Read the Full Fact Sheet from RMRS

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Fact sheet: Fire retardant effects on wetland macroinvertebrate communities

The Southwest Fire Science Consortium released a fact sheet that discusses a review of the impacts of a commonly used fire retardant on aquatic macroinvertebrates. The main takeaway from the research highlighted in the fact sheet is fire retardants can seriously affect aquatic life and may contribute to water quality problems, especially in wetlands and ponds where the water is stagnant and exposure may be prolonged. Researchers also highlight that proactive fuel reduction and prescribed fire—especially near water sources and communities—can reduce unplanned fire risk and the need for chemical fire retardants.

Read the full fact sheet from SWFSC

Wildfire Wednesday #173: Beyond Acres Treated - All Hands All Lands Collaboration This Fall Burn Season

Happy Holidays Fireshed community,

As temperatures drop and snow begins to fall, many land managers across New Mexico have shifted from summer forest treatments to winter management activities, such as burning slash piles. But before winter settled in, land management agencies and partners across the state achieved several major milestones, with this fall experiencing a great amount of collaborative, landscape-scale prescribed fire work.

After prescribed fire operations conclude, agencies typically release updates on acres treated, smoke impacts, and long-term monitoring plans. What’s often missing from these summaries, however, is the larger story: why each burn mattered, how it contributes to landscape resilience, and what it means for the people putting fire on the ground. Each operation represents meaningful progress, not only in reducing the risk of a future consequential fire and restoring ecosystems adapted to fire, but also in developing the future fire workforce and strengthening cross-jurisdictional partnerships.

Highlighted below are several of the autumn prescribed burns supported or led by the All Hands All Lands (AHAL) Burn Network, a critical resource that helps land managers reintroduce fire at the right place and time and increase the pace and geographic scale at which it is happening.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

  • All Hands All Lands Fall 2025 Prescribed Fires Successes

    • Black Lake Prescribed Broadcast Burn (deep dive on the burn and its impact)

    • Borrego Mesa Prescribed Jackpot Burn (Truchas/Santa Fe NF, NM)

    • Ojo Sarco Prescribed Broadcast Burn (Ojo Sarco/Carson NF, NM)

    • Holiday Mesa Prescribed Broadcast Burn (Jemez Springs/Santa Fe NF, NM)

    • Espinosa Prescribed Broadcast Burn (Mountainair, NM)

  • Additional Resources

    • The Paseo Project - Art X Fire in northern NM

    • Conservation Seedling Program - taking orders now

    • New! Prescribed Burn Planner Webinar

    • National Wildfire Mitigation Awards

Be merry and be well,
Megan

All Hands All Lands Fall 2025 Prescribed Fire Successes

Black Lake Prescribed Broadcast Burn

In a nutshell: the 2025 burn, the sixth in this area, was part of a much larger landscape-scale restoration effort—one that requires long-term commitment.

During the third week of October, roughly 50 people from agencies, organizations, and local departments across New Mexico gathered in Black Lake (a small community just east of Angel Fire) to complete a 370-acre collaborative prescribed broadcast burn. Organized by the Forest Stewards Guild and bossed (overseen) by The Nature Conservancy, the burn took place on State Trust Land managed by the New Mexico State Land Office. Participants represented a wide range of partners, including the Forest Stewards Guild and its youth crews, Angel Fire Fire Department, Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico Highlands University, the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI), The Nature Conservancy, Philmont Scout Ranch, the New Mexico Forestry Division, and Moreno Valley Fire Department.

The impact of this burn comes from both the collaborative execution and the strong training and learning environment it created. As participants gathered for morning briefing early on day one of the burn, the circle was filled predominantly by FFT2s—firefighter type 2 personnel who hold basic fire qualifications—with several experiencing prescribed fire for the first time. Many individuals, especially from local fire departments and non-profit organizations, were placed in trainee roles, working to advance their fire qualifications and gain experience that can be put to use in future assignments. Many of the FFT2 roles (holding the containment lines, putting strips of fire on the ground to carry the flames in a controlled manner, mopping up after the burn was completed to ensure its containment) were filled by members of the Forest Stewards Youth Corps crews and students from New Mexico Highlands University. Through this training and hands-on experience, collaborative burns can strengthen local capacity and provide meaningful workforce development opportunities for young adults looking to explore careers in forestry, wildland fire, and natural resource management.

Burn organizers additionally hosted a public tour of the burn, bringing more than a dozen community members onto the landscape to observe operations firsthand, learn about safety measures that reduce the risk of escapes, and watch active fire on the ground. Public tours play a critical role in building familiarity and comfort with prescribed fire, especially in a landscape which has been impacted by large severe wildfires in the recent past. This is exemplified with NMFWRI, where staff members took the initiative to become fire-qualified active burners after attending a public tour during the 2024 Black Lake prescribed burn. As one 2025 FFT1 noted, the tours help grow the next generation of practitioners as much as they help educate the public.

Reflecting on the field tour, one of the facilitators shared:

“The field tour was time for attendees to interact with low intensity fire up-close, to watch it move in the grass based on fuels, winds, and topography, and to feel the heat of different flame lengths. The questions and dialogue that resulted showed that all attendees brought their curiosity and an open mind to the day. Questions ranged from firing techniques, how does the operation that we were observing relate to the burn plan, to more broad questions about high elevation ponderosa pine ecology.”
— Deputy Director, Forest Stewards Guild

The 2025 burn is part of a much larger landscape-scale restoration effort—one that requires long-term commitment. A representative of the New Mexico State Land Office emphasized that this work is a sustained endeavor in forest and fire restoration. This commitment is evident in the years of effort that partners have invested in returning fire to this landscape, with treatments beginning back in 2013. The 2025 burn was the sixth in this area and the second entry burn for these units, which first burned in 2013 and 2016.

This year’s work highlights the culmination of years of relationship- and trust-building among the Forest Stewards Guild, the New Mexico State Land Office, The Nature Conservancy, fire organizations across northern New Mexico, universities, and the broader Black Lake community, who continue to support this form of land stewardship.

In the closing briefing, the Black Lake 2025 burn boss—who brings several decades of wildland and prescribed fire experience—offered words of appreciation that captured the spirit of the entire effort:

“I work with a lot of groups that want to be like this and so I think what you have here and what you have been developing for over a decade is really a premiere product... If you don’t already know this, you are a part of something really special up here.”
— Black Lake Rx Burn Boss - Jeremy Bailey, TNC

These words reflect what many felt throughout the operation. The Black Lake prescribed burn represents not only technical success, but the strength of long-term partnerships, shared learning, and a community that believes in the power of beneficial fire.

 

Borrego Mesa Prescribed Jackpot Burn

This 399-acre broadcast burn on the Santa Fe National Forest was the first burn on the Española Ranger District since post-Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon, marking one step in rebuilding public trust and safely re-initiating prescribed fire operations. On the landscape, this burn helped reduce heavy jackpots of dead and down fuels that had accumulated during the past few years of limited fire use. The project was also significant for its interagency coordination, led by Forest Service but also involving the City of Santa Fe Fire Department, the New Mexico Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department, and the Forest Stewards Youth Corps.

 

Ojo Sarco Prescribed Broadcast Burn

This 391-acre WUI (wildland–urban interface) broadcast burn on the Carson National Forest was located along Highway 76 near the community of Ojo Sarco and directly adjacent to private land. This burn not only achieved the objective of reducing hazardous fuels, but did so in an area where homes, transportation corridors, and forested lands meet, an example area where wildfire poses a high risk for destructive impact on a community. Successfully treating this area reduced fuels that pose a risk to Ojo Sarco, demonstrated careful coordination with landowners, and showcased how prescribed fire can be safely applied even in complex boundary conditions where private land boundaries are just feet away from active ignitions.

 

Holiday Mesa Prescribed Broadcast Burn

Members of the Forest Stewards Youth Corps - Jemez Pueblo Youth Crew were involved in this 878-acre burn led by the USDA Forest Service. Through it, they were able to return fire to the landscape on ancestral territory near the Pueblo. It supported Jemez’s ongoing work to restore traditional fire practices, empowered tribal youth through hands-on experience in land stewardship, and demonstrated the ability of federal partners to engage in land management beyond the limited scope of federal employees.

Forest Stewards Youth Corps Program Coordinator and member of Jemez Forest Stewards Youth Crew holding on the fireline

Member of Jemez Forest Stewards Youth Crew bucking a flaming log

Strips of fire being applied by igniters

Espinosa Prescribed Broadcast Burn

The 1,343-acre burn, the largest ever conducted on the Mountainair Ranger District, occurred within the Espinosa–Barranco Wildlife Improvement Project area. The scale made it an important milestone for the district’s capacity to implement large landscape-level prescribed fire. The project relied heavily on aerial ignition, allowing crews to treat over 1,000 acres in just a single day, a significant win in increasing the scale and pace to landscape treatment. In a landscape which is still feeling the impacts of severe wildfires such as the 2016 Dog head Fire, this collaborative burn represented a shift toward improving habitat conditions for wildlife, enhancing ecosystem resilience, and advancing the district’s long-term landscape restoration goals through the use of good fire.

Smoke drifting from the burn area north across the Manzano Mountains after ignitions were completed.

Additional Resources

The Paseo Project - Taos, New Mexico

The Paseo Project invites artists working in all media (2D, 3D, installation, writing, sound, projection, performance, interdisciplinary forms) to apply for participation in Disturbance, a new interdisciplinary program that pairs artists with scientists to explore wildfire as both a destabilizing force and a regenerative element in ecological and social systems. This project will culminate in an exhibition and series of events in Taos, New Mexico, September–December 2026.

Through a required four-day Northern New Mexico based “fire ecology boot camp,” selected artists will be immersed in collaborative dialogue with fire practitioners and ecologists, and site visits to burn scars and post-fire landscapes. Artists will then return to their home studios to develop new work that reflects on the ecological, cultural, and emotional dimensions of wildfire. These works will then be shared in an exhibition, outdoor installations, and public programs in Taos, NM, designed to engage the broader community in dialogue about living with fire in a climate-altered future.

Applications will be accepted through February 1, 2026.

Apply Now
 

New Mexico Forestry Division offers low-cost seedlings in over 60 varieties for landowners to use in reforestation, erosion control, windbreaks, streambank restoration, and wildlife habitat improvement. Spring season orders for seedlings are now open. Ordering is first come first serve, so order early for the best selection. 

Learn more about tree types and uses and order seedlings at Conservation Seedling Program - Forestry.

To participate in the program you must own at least one acre of land in New Mexico and the seedlings purchased through the program must be used for conservation purposes.

 

Webinar: Plan, Predict, and Burn - The New Prescribed Burn Planner
Wednesday, December 17, 2025, 1pm ET

Join Karen Cummins and Dr. Holly Nowell from Tall Timbers for a free one hour webinar as they demonstrate the Prescribed Burn Planner v2’s new capabilities.

The Prescribed Burn Planner (PBP) was originally developed to help users plan and prioritize prescribed burns by providing weather forecasts for individual burn units, thus hopefully reducing the number of missed burn windows. After receiving funding support from USDA Forest Service, Southern Region (R8), PBP version 2 was created to take prescribed burn planning to the next level.

The new release includes:

  • Updated meteorological data

  • Ability to draw the boundaries of a burn unit, rather than just a point location

  • Simple smoke plume modeling with a list of potentially impacted locations

  • Burn history tracking

  • Email notification for upcoming ideal burn windows as specified by the user for each individual location.

Register for the Webinar

The National Wildfire Mitigation Awards (WMAs) recognize outstanding work and significant program impact in wildfire preparedness and mitigation. The program was established in 2014 by the National Association of State Foresters (NASF), the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and the USDA Forest Service (USFS), including the National Wildfire Mitigation Award, the National Mitigation Hero Award, and the Wildfire Mitigation Legacy Award.

Nominations for the 2026 awards are open and must be submitted by January 7, 2026. Past awardees, both individuals and organizations, have displayed outstanding dedication to wildfire mitigation across a broad spectrum of activities.

Submit Nominations Here

Wildfire Wednesdays #172: Full Cost Accounting of Wildfires

Happy Wednesday, Fireshed Community!

How do we measure the cost of a wildfire? The financial burden of suppression and containment efforts is one metric which is documented fairly consistently at the national level; however, this doesn’t account for the broader range of expenses such as property damages, public health impacts, and long-term economic, social, and environmental impacts. A 2013 study out of New Mexico found that the full cost of wildfires far exceeds suppression, that costs vary significantly from fire to fire, and that direct and indirect costs are incurred first by individuals and private businesses and then by federal, state, and local governments. Today’s newsletter dives into full cost accounting of wildfires, a perspective shift which can help to highlight the financial, as well as ecological, importance of fire prevention and resilience work.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Stay warm and healthy,
Rachel

 

What is Full Cost Accounting?

“Wildfire costs greatly vary depending on factors within the built and unbuilt environment. Socioeconomic context, housing density, the duration and size of a wildfire, and other variables influence the overall cost. In general, upward trends in urban growth and development in areas at risk to wildfires suggest a parallel rise in total wildfire costs.” On average (nationally), suppression costs comprise only about 9% of total wildfire costs, and “almost half of all wildfire costs are paid for at the local level, including homeowners, businesses, and government agencies. Many local wildfire costs are due to long-term damages to community and environmental services, such as landscape rehabilitation, lost business and tax revenues, and property and infrastructure repairs” (Headwaters Economics, 2018) and other unexpected impacts such as declining property values after a fire, harm to health, and changes to ecosystem processes. The economic impacts of wildfire can permeate and accrue for years to decades. Full cost accounting takes all of these fiscal impacts into consideration to reach a more holistic estimate of the cost of wildfire.

“Full cost accounting after wildfires is critical for adequate government budgeting, post-wildfire resource allocation such as disaster recovery assistance and understanding the full scope of wildfire to help communities learn to better live with fire” (Hjerpe et el., 2023). For a good overview of the complexity of full cost accounting, view this blog from the Council of Western State Foresters.

How is full cost accounting measured?

Full cost accounting is dependent on a number of highly nuanced factors. The Full Cost of New Mexico Wildfires mentions that:

  • Costs depend on the location of the wildfire as well as the severity and length. For example, a wildfire occurring near a heavily populated area may result in significant evacuation costs through displacement of residents and businesses, and smoke-related illnesses will likely be greater. In contrast, a wildfire occurring in a remote area may incur more costs through impacts to wildlife habitats, watershed and water supplies, or recreation areas.

  • Costs are incurred initially and over succeeding years - there is a temporal dimension to wildfire costs. Many costs are incurred during or immediately after the fire and their impacts are relatively temporary (e.g. suppression, evacuation, disruption of tourism and transportation routes) while others (e.g. impacts to respiratory health and water sources and destruction of habitat, timber resources, residential and commercial structures, and watershed areas) may occur concurrent with the wildfire but the rehabilitation, rebuilding, and repair will take much longer.

    • In the arid American West, long-term damage to forest watershed resources (such as damaged water supply infrastructure and post-wildfire flooding) may represent the largest, and least documented, costs of uncharacteristic wildfire over time (Lynch, 2004).

 

A national average of the breakdown of full wildfire costs over time from Headwaters Economics. It should be noted that the exact proportions vary widely from one fire to the next depending on local factors.

 

  • The burden of costs varies - just as the magnitude and type of cost is case-specific for each wildfire, the distribution of who absorbs these costs is different for each incident. 

The Western Forestry Leadership Coalition published a 2022 report which breaks costs down into three categories -

Those costs which occur as a result of a wildfire:

  1. Direct Costs, which are incurred directly during an incident.

  2. Indirect Costs — losses which are incurred after an incident but are attributable to it.

And those which represent expenditures that would reduce the incidence of and damage from future catastrophic fire:

3. Indirect Costs — mitigation Investments.

 
 
Read the full report for a detailed breakdown
 

FCA in New Mexico and the Southwest

While there are examples of full cost accounting for fires in the West (see “Case Studies”, pages 7-16), the practice is still comparatively rare because of the difficulty obtaining the relevant data. A recent remeasure of the full cost of the 2010 Schultz Fire in Arizona, while illuminating the longevity of post-fire impacts and expenses, was still conservative as it did not account for every potential direct and indirect ‘net value change’ (e.g. non-mortality related impacts to physical and mental health).

2013 Full Cost Accounting of the Schultz fire estimated total costs around $138.8 million; ten years later, researchers found that costs had continued to accrue to the tune of $179.1 - 187.4 million.


This remeasure found that 10 years post-fire, total accrued wildfire costs were 29–35% higher than the initial full cost accounting performed in 2013, bringing the current-day cost for this 15,000-acre fire to ~$180.4 million. The authors write “given the trends of increasing wildfire severity and duration of fire seasons, combined with… myriad costs of wildfire, it is safe to assume the full costs of wildfire are vastly underrepresented and enormous. Additionally, as the Schultz Fire example demonstrates, a single fire often has many costs that are difficult to quantify and are temporally dispersed, such as costs to ecosystem services or community well-being. This further emphasizes the importance of proactive fuel treatments and forest restoration work to reduce the risk of uncharacteristic fire and restore ecosystem health… Millions of dollars may have been saved by forest restoration treatments in key parts of the Schultz Fire perimeter before the fire.”

Types of Forest Restoration Benefits Quantified in the Literature (Gray boxes are broad benefit types; blue boxes are individual benefit types that compose broad AWC categories).
From https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108244

One key to understanding the full cost of wildfires is recognizing that these climbing costs and consequences are linked to increasingly uncharacteristic fire behavior and impacts driven by changes to our climate and ecosystem conditions. In these southwestern fire adapted landscapes, wildfires can also result in ecological benefits, especially in the areas that do not burn at high severity and are long overdue for fire. It is when fires burn hot and large enough to cause severe impacts to ecosystem functions and communities that the damages really begin to accrue. Forest restoration treatments result in overall lower-severity fires, which lessens the intensity of subsequent impacts, including post-wildfire flooding; “in the most valuable and at-risk watersheds, every dollar invested in forest restoration can provide up to seven dollars of return in the form of benefits and provide a return-on-investment of 600%” (Hjerpe, 2024).

The fire prevention triangle, adapted from Riebold (1957) and NWCG (2021). Illustrated by Kara Skye Gibson. Sourced from Preventing Human-Caused Wildfire Ignitions on Public Lands: A Review of Best Practices

Investing in prevention of human-caused ignitions and emerging wildfire detection tools and technology are also promising financially prudent measures to avoid or reduce the full cost of wildfires. These approaches can decrease the number of wildfires which burn into communities and devastate landscapes - especially during times of the year when wildfires are more prone to rapid spread and growth in intensity due to weather, wind, and availability of fuel. Remote sensing enables the early identification and tracking of wildfires over large geographic areas, providing valuable information for engagement, decision-making, and fire resources allocation. Decision-support data products may have a large impact in some situations (e.g., an extreme day with multiple ignitions, a fire threatening a high value asset, etc.), and a limited impact in others (e.g., wet fire seasons, fire activity beyond the capacity of suppression resources, etc.). Preventing or mitigating one future extreme event may economically justify these tools many times over (Hope et al., 2024). While the cost of operating fire detection tools (towers, cameras, etc.) exceeds their value in the reduction of direct suppression costs, the benefits are realized in the reduction of total wildfire costs. Further research on the cost-benefit ratio of these tools is needed as current analyses are limited.

 

Upcoming Opportunities and Additional Resources

Job Opportunities with NM Forestry Division

Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) Manager

New Mexico Forestry Division is currently hiring for a Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) Manager. The position application will be open through December 5, 2025.

This position will manage the state's Community Wildfire Defense Grant program. The position responsibilities are to manage, direct, and actively engages in forest and watershed management and community wildfire risk reduction within the Forestry Division's jurisdiction of 43 million acres of state and non-municipal private land. The position is responsible for ensuring the eligible local governments, Tribes and non-governmental organizations receive funding for Community Wildfire Protection Planning (CWPP) and implementation of wildfire mitigation projects described in CWPP.

For questions about the position, please reach out to Melissa McLamb, (505) 394-2277, (Melissa.McLamb@emnrd.nm.gov).

Permanent Part-Time Engine Boss

This is a Lead Wildland Firefighter (EMNRD #10116150) job located in Tierra Amarilla out of the Chama District. This position application will be open through January 1, 2026. The salary is $26.57 - $39.86 Hourly, $55,273 - $82,909 Annually (Pay Band C7). To learn more and apply, please visit the Forestry Division’s Careers site.

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Fire Planning Task Force Updates

November 2025 Public Meeting Minutes

On November 17th, 2025, the NM Fire Planning Task Force convened to review recommendations from the CWPP Sub-group, hear updates from both the Mapping and Standards Sub-group, hear a report on F.A.I.R Insured Home Hardening Grants, and more.

The attached minutes provide more details on all agenda items including:

  • Outcomes from the review of CWPPs from Eddy County, Sandavol County, and Eldorado Communities

  • Adoption of the IBHS Wildfire prepared Home standards as voluntary standards for home hardening and mitigation in New Mexico

  • Pilot of the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance’s Home Hardening grant in Wimsatt, New Mexico

View the Minutes

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Reserved Treaty Rights Lands Program: The Power of Partnership

The Nature Conservancy in Montana produced a short video, “Reserved Treaty Rights Lands Program: The Power of Partnership,” which looks at how the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are working with the Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy to conduct burns on off-reservation lands with Tribal treaty rights in a unique partnership made possible by the Reserved Treaty Rights Lands (RTRL) program. The RTRL program, which is administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, provides funds to protect and enhance natural and cultural resources on Tribes’ aboriginal lands that are at high risk of wildfire.

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Treatment and Wildfire Interagency Geodatabase (TWIG)

The Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) have launched the 1.0 version of their free tool, the Treatment and Wildfire Interagency Geodatabase (TWIG), a collaborative, open-access data platform that makes national fuel treatment and wildfire information accessible to all.  

 
 

As a national, open-access geodatabase, TWIG centralizes federal treatment and wildfire data in one publicly available platform. By doing so, it:

• Empowers communities and land managers to demonstrate the effectiveness of fuel treatments

• Helps researchers and policymakers understand treatment-wildfire interactions at landscape and local scales

• Promotes cross-agency coordination and transparency in wildfire risk reduction efforts

Wildfire Wednesdays #171: Fire Preparedness Frameworks, Risk Reduction, and Insurability

Happy Fire Friday!

Fire adaptation is an alternative to the costly and ineffective model of relying solely on fire suppression for community safety; it empowers communities to prepare for wildland fires, mitigate their impacts, and recover more effectively when they inevitably occur. However, there are many tools, pathways, and angles to consider when creating fire ready communities. Firewise, a program of NFPA, has gained popularity over the last decade as a means to get neighbors and friends engaged with defensible space and home hardening, as well as a way to retain insurability. The program and title of Firewise Recognized Community is one tool, one approach, and it nestles will with other programs and frameworks. Since November 20th marks the renewal deadline for communities who are Firewise Recognized, today we will be exploring some of these tools and programs in-depth, how they differ and can work in tandem to educate and motivate, and how following the recommendations of each one may impact a community’s risk vs insurability.

This Wildfire Wednesday Features:

Be well,
Rachel

 

Simplifying Firewise and FAC

This information was originally shared in Wildfire Wednesday #96; view the newsletter and watch the recent FACNM webinar to learn more, including how to choose the right program for your community.

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. As Firewise Program Manager puts it, Firewise “fits into [the Fire Adapted Communities framework] as a tool. It’s not the only tool and it doesn’t do all things. It is the built environment piece [of the FAC preparedness wheel] - how do we help self-defined neighborhoods come together and get started on that [fire preparedness] pathway?”

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.

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

 


What is the Fire Adapted Communities (FAC) Framework?

Fire Adapted Communities is a holistic, adaptive, and comprehensive framework to help communities live better with wildfires. 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. FAC looks beyond residents and individual actions and broadens the scope of what it means to be fire ready.

The Firewise USA® recognition program is one of many tools a community can use to address its fire risk. Focused primarily on residents and residential action, the Firewise USA® program is an important piece of the wildfire adaptation puzzle. The International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Ready, Set, Go! Program, focusing on empowering fire departments to communicate with their constituents, is another common tool used as part of a community’s overall fire adaptation framework. Additional strategies such as evacuation planning, developing and updating community wildfire protection plans, adopting WUI codes and ordinances, conducting controlled burns and performing post-fire recovery planning all contribute to a fire adapted community.

View the FAC community resilience framework, smoke ready framework, and suite of actions by clicking on the graphics below.

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.

While FAC offers many resources and opportunities to learn from other people doing similar work, there is no formal fire adapted communities recognition program. It does not guarantee prevention of ignitions nor does following the recommendations tailored to your community lead to a certification.

 

Program impact: insurability vs risk reduction

What is impactful risk reduction?

Frameworks like Fire Adapted Communities incorporate decades of lessons learned and recommendations from fire experts to provide a comprehensive suite of actions that individuals and communities can take to reduce their overall fire risk, increase their home and property’s chances of survival, lessen the devastation and interruption to daily life that wildfires cause, and work together to recover better after a fire happens. These approaches are focused on hazard mitigation, education, preparation, and teaching communities how to live with fire.

Image from Wildfire Risk to Communities.

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy is a strategic push to work collaboratively among all stakeholders and across all landscapes, using best science, to make meaningful progress toward three goals:
- Resilient Landscapes
- Fire Adapted Communities
- Safe and Effective Wildfire Response

The frameworks encourage community-level participation, because research has shown that collective action - everyone working individually, alongside their neighbors, to reduce their hazardous fuels, improve their structure’s fire resistance, advocate for improved routes of ingress and egress, etc. - creates a broad net of protection which is far more effective at reducing the impacts of a wildfire on the community than isolated individual action. Learn more about reducing risk. Following the recommended actions and approaches of these frameworks may help improve fire outcomes for the community; however, they do not guarantee insurability of homes and businesses.

What influences insurability?

“Viewed through a risk management lens, wildfire risk… throughout the western United States is becoming uninsurable. Risk is the product of hazard (the combination of the probability of wildfire and its characteristic intensity), exposure (where the item at risk is located and its value), and vulnerability (how damaging wildfire is to the item at risk)” (TNC, 2021). Insurance providers base their coverage decisions on many factors; when it comes to wildfire, underwriters will consider a property's fire protection class, location, proximity to fire services, exposure to nearby fire hazards, and the potential for loss as well as external factors such as wildfire and climate risk models. These factors culminate in an assessment and risk classification which then informs whether the insurer will offer coverage, and if so under what policy terms (e.g. coverage limits, deductibles, exclusions) and at what price. Home and business owners cannot influence many insurance assessment factors (e.g. the risk rating of a specific geographic location), nor know exactly what factors any given insurance provider will use (this is proprietary information). So what can you do reduce your property’s risk classification to retain or obtain coverage?

Start with the area around your home - is the structure itself built out of highly combustible materials? Are there gaps under the porch, along the roof, between door frames and windows where embers could land and smolder? Is the landscape immediately around your house thick with flammable vegetation? These things all contribute to your property’s risk rating and can be altered and improved.

Slide from 2025 NM WUFS presentation by Ahley Dalton Agency LLC, a New Mexico insurance provider representative, speaking about fire insurance and the IBHS Wildfire Prepared Homes program.

The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) worked with insurance providers to create the Wildfire Prepared Home (WPH) program. The program is supported by property insurers and other affiliated companies, and some insurers are now offering policies for homes that meet the standard. WPH provides recommendations for creating defensible space and improving property construction by replacing highly combustible materials with fire-resistant options. This program from IBHS is coming to New Mexico in 2026; this means that residents who follow the recommendations of the program to reduce their individual risk can then have their property inspected and receive a Wildfire Prepared Home designation certificate. The certificate, which demonstrates that the home has met specific mitigation actions, can then be shown to insurance companies. The designation is valid for three years. Learn more about the potential for loss of insurance and the space IBHS is looking to fill by viewing this presentation from the 2025 New Mexico Wildland Urban Fire Summit.

Additional actions that a community can take to improve their chances of retaining fire insurance include:

Image from Living With Fire

  • Adopt and enforce local codes (such as defensible space ordinances) that require fire-adapted landscaping and/or ignition-resistant building materials and design.

  • Thin vegetation in common areas (not just individual properties) to reduce wildfire risk.

    • Create defensible space on neighboring public lands by working with public land agency urban lot management programs.

  • Improve infrastructure by creating clear emergency alert systems and evacuation routes and increasing access to fire hydrants.

  • Improve access by ensuring roads are wide enough for emergency response vehicles (fire engines) to pass and home addresses are clearly visible from the street.

  • Work with local fire departments and specialists to conduct professional home and community hazard assessments and develop mitigation strategies.

 

Additional resources

Upcoming virtual town hall from the NM Fire Planning Task Force

The next public meeting of the New Mexico Fire planning task force, hosted by the Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) Forestry Division, will be held at 9:00 AM on Monday, November 17th, 2025. Agenda items include updates from the wildfire risk priority mapping, defensible space standards, and communications sub-groups; an update on F.A.I.R. Insured Home Hardening Grants; a report from the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) sub-group; State Forester’s update; a round robin open discussion; and time for public comment. View the full announcement and instructions for joining virtually (recommended due to limited space) or in-person.

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Resources for renters

Many fire preparedness and educational resources are targeted toward home and business owners, leaving short- and long-term renters in an information void. Scroll down to see resources collected and tailored to renters:

  • Short-term rentals like Airbnb and VRBO are increasing across the Southwest. While beneficial for local economies, many visitors are unaware of the state’s wildfire risks or how to stay informed. To address this, the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and the Arizona Wildfire Initiative created a wildfire information packet for short-term rentals. This customizable resource educates guests on wildfire risks and provides tools to help them stay informed and make safer choices.

  • As of 2023, 30.7% of housing units in New Mexico were renter-occupied (U.S. Census Bureau). Additionally, certain demographic groups—such as young adults and individuals with less formal education—are more likely to rent, and rental rates among these groups have increased nationwide over the past decade. To help promote wildfire preparedness for all New Mexicans, Wildfire Wednesday #156 focused on resources for renters, including topics like evacuation planning, renters’ insurance, and post-fire recovery.

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Upcoming webinars

Thursday, November 20, 2025, 2:00pm MT: Wood you believe it? Aspen interactions with fire and wildfire spread in the Southwest

From disease resilience to browse pressure, recreational value to fire resistance, aspen has gotten a lot of attention over the past few years. This webinar will offer insights on various aspects of the intersection between aspen forests and fire in the Southwestern U.S., including: the ability of aspen to slow fire growth and act as a firebreak, fire radiative power/burn severity in aspen forests of the Southern Rockies, and the relationship between stand composition and suppression strategies.

Register now
The GSFFC is a coalition of public and private organizations. The GSFFC is not a subdivision of the State of New Mexico, as defined in the state’s Open Meetings Act, §§ 10-15-1 to 10-15-4 NMSA 1978. Although federal agencies participate in the GSFFC, the Coalition is not a federal advisory board and was not created by a federal agency, as defined by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), 5.U.S.C. app. 2, §§ 1 to 16 (2012). The GSFFC operates informally to support its partners, and is not incorporated as a non-profit, 501(C)(3), partnership, or other legal status.