Ready, Set, Go! A Wildfire Preparedness Workshop

Special Topic - How Does the THREAT of Fire Affect Your Homeowner’s Insurance?

Our shared goal is to create a Fire-Adapted Community. Wildfires pose a significant threat, burning homes, displacing families, and endangering firefighters. They also degrade water quality and cost our community millions of dollars. But together, we can prepare and break this cycle.

Your involvement is crucial in this endeavor.

The key question in reducing wildfire risk is, “What can we do?” Hermits Peak Fire was devastating. Living with wildfire is about making changes before it happens. Together, we can create a safe and resilient community where fire plays its natural role without destroying lives and property.

Join us at Ready, Set, Go! to take positive steps to build a Fire Adapted Community. Get information and help from the experts from the Fire Adapted New Mexico Learning Network, Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition, Forest Stewards Guild, City of Santa Fe Fire Department, Villages of Santa Fe, Christ Church Santa Fe, and AARP New Mexico, Saturday, April 27th, doors open at 10 am – 1 pm at Christ Church Santa Fe, corner of Cordova and Don Gaspar. The workshops are free and open to the public. Plenty of free parking. Refreshments are provided by the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Santa Fe.

Learn from the experts about:

Preparing your home for the 2024 fire season:

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

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

• Create a Fire Adapted Community based on your specific neighborhood

• Understanding Home insurance challenges in today’s market

Emergency Preparation

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

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

• Prepare an emergency plan for your family

Wildfire Modeling:

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

Wildfire Science:

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

Insurance Panel discussion on homeowners’ fire insurance: How does the THREAT of Fire Affect Your Homeowner’s Insurance?

Contact: Ann Church, info@villagesofsantafe.org 505-501-8187 (w) 505-670-9718 (c)

Location: Office of Emergency Management 

1600 St Michael's Drive Bldg #2 - Public Safety Building, Santa Fe, NM

Are you ready to take the lead in protecting your community from wildfires? The next Fireshed Ambassador Meeting is just around the corner, and you won't want to miss out on the crucial information we have in store! 

Is Your Home Wildfire-Ready? 

This is the question on everyone's mind, and we're here to help you find the answer. Join us at the meeting—learn about the Community Wildfire Mitigation in the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed project, and the resources available to your community through the Community Wildfire Defense Grant.  

Fire Adapted Communities Microgrants 

Explore the opportunities presented by Fire Adapted Communities Microgrants. Discover how these microgrants can be a game-changer for enhancing community resilience. We'll provide insights on successful projects, share application tips, and help you turn your vision into reality. 

Connect with Like-Minded Advocates 

Network with fellow Fireshed Ambassadors and share experiences, insights, and success stories. Together, we can create a network of empowered individuals dedicated to safeguarding our communities. 

Don't miss this opportunity to be at the forefront of wildfire defense in your community. Let's build a safer, more resilient future together.  

Fireshed Ambassador Program - Ignite Change, Defend Communities! 

Can’t make it in person?

On Thursday, April 13th, we will be holding a Fireshed Ambassador quarterly meeting from 5:30 - 7:00 at the Santa Fe Emergency Management Center at 1600 St. Michaels Drive. During this meeting we will identify products and services available for wildfire mitigation and preparation within the Santa Fe Fireshed. We will also provide updates on Ambassador-led National Wildfire Awareness Day events planned for May 6th. We hope you can attend!

The Ambassador approach involves engaging our neighbors to help them understand their wildfire risk and encourage them to take action to reduce that risk. The Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Ambassador program was founded in 2018 and is coordinated by the Forest Stewards Guild and the City of Santa Fe Fire Department. Ambassadors receive education and training on topics such as evacuation preparedness and egress strategies, fire behavior, home hardening, and defensible space. Acting at the neighborhood scale, Ambassadors increase community capacity and preparedness in the event of a wildfire.

Last year’s Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire was devastating. As the 2023 fire season approaches, are you ready? Living with wildfire is about making changes before it happens. Can we create a safe and resilient community where fire plays its natural role without destroying lives and property? Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon burned homes, displaced families, put firefighters at risk, degraded water quality, and cost millions of dollars. Threatening fires make us scramble and spend a lot of money reacting, then rebuilding. How can we prepare and break this cycle?

Join us at Ready, Set, Go! to take positive steps to build a Fire Adapted Community. Get information and help from experts from the Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition, Forest Stewards Guild, City of Santa Fe Fire Department, and Villages of Santa Fe at Christ Church Santa Fe (corner of Cordova and Don Gaspar) on Saturday, March 18th, 10 am–12:30 pm. This workshop will feature information about wildfire risk in the Santa Fe Fireshed, a presentation by representatives from the Wildfire Research Center, a mini-training on how to conduct a home hazard assessment, what to include in a Ready, Set, Go kit, and much more. This workshop is free and open to the public. Plenty of free parking is available.

Coalitions and Collaboratives, Inc. (COCO) and the USDA Forest Service invite you to join the community disaster mitigation conversation on March 3rd!

When: Friday, March 3, 2023 from 9-10am MST
Where: Virtual - GoTo Meeting
What: Introduction to CMAT
How: Register by clicking the button below or by visiting https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8105599049674114906

Come learn from a team of experts about the Community Mitigation Assistance Team (CMAT) national interagency resource, how it can benefit your community, and how to access its resources. The CMATs are available to help your community develop and implement strategic plans, build partnerships, and provide training to enhance wildfire mitigation and preparedness.

CMATs are designed to help communities build sustainable local capacity for community wildfire mitigation during high-risk times when awareness for risk reduction and likelihood of action is the highest. With the increasing threat of wildfire across the Southwest, it is essential that communities take proactive steps to mitigate risk and build resilience. By partnering with the CMATs, you can take advantage of the support and resources to realize a more fire adapted future.

To learn more about the program, please visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/fire/cmat.

The team hopes to see you on March 3rd and looks forward to working with you to protect our communities from wildfire.

On, Thursday, January 26th, we will be holding a Fireshed Ambassador quarterly meeting from 5:30 - 7:00 at the Santa Fe Emergency Management Center at 1600 St. Michaels Drive. During this meeting we will begin planning for National Wildfire Awareness Day (May 6th) events, discuss the Santa Fe Mountains Resiliency Project, and describe the Ambassador liaison position in the context of the Coalition. We hope you can attend!

The Ambassador approach involves engaging our neighbors to help them understand their wildfire risk and encourage them to take action to reduce that risk. The Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Ambassador program was founded in 2018 and is coordinated by the Forest Stewards Guild and the City of Santa Fe Fire Department. Ambassadors receive education and training on topics such as evacuation preparedness and egress strategies, fire behavior, home hardening, and fuels reduction. Acting at the neighborhood scale, Ambassadors increase community capacity and preparedness in the event of a wildfire.

Glorieta Camps is hosting an informational event on Friday, December 16th with an optional field component during the day (3:30pm - 5:00pm) and a classroom-based meeting in the evening (5:30 - 6:30pm). The event will provide information about the fire mitigation work that has been completed and is in process at Glorieta Camps.

For the field tour, meet at gate at 3:30pm

For the informational meeting, meet at the dining hall at 5:30pm (see map below)

Topics 

• Meet and greet

• Project History

• Past treatments

• Planned treatments

• Dialogue

Purpose

To reconnect with community members and interested and concerned neighbors about why, how, and when pile burning happens at Glorieta Camps.

If you have questions or comments on the field tour, please email or call Gabe Kohler, at: gabe@forestguild.org or 509-844-3048.

The quarterly partnership meeting and field tour will be held in person next week at Glorieta Camps. The meeting will kick off with a field tour of the fire mitigation work that has been completed and is in process at Glorieta Camps, with a business meeting to follow.

If you are a community member or prospective partner who would like to attend the meeting, you must fill in the form below to let the Coalition Chair know that you will be attending and to incorporate you into the agenda if desired. If you do not fill in this form by August 15th, we will not be able to accommodate you into the meeting.

The Presentation

The Speakers

Kit O’Connor, Research Ecologist, USDA Rocky Mountain Research Station - Human Dimensions Program: Wildfire Risk Management Science Team
Kit’s primary research interest is in bridging the human and ecosystem dimensions of fire management; including the use of pre-fire planning and operational decision support analytics to promote ecosystem restoration and resilience, safe and effective suppression response, and sustainable forest and fire management systems. Kit is an analytics lead for the National Risk Management Assistance Program for large wildfire management and a core member of the PODs strategic fire planning team. The team is currently working with more than 60 national forests, three states and, numerous other public and private land managers to develop and implement sustainable fire management plans. Originally from Edmonds, WA, Kit has a B.S. in Entomology from Penn State University, M.S. in Biology from The University of Quebec at Montreal, and a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Management from The University of Arizona. He is recipient of the 2019 RMRS Science Delivery Award and 2020 forest Service Deputy Chief’s Award for Science Delivery. Kit lives in Missoula, Montana where he enjoys trail running, mountain biking, and family campouts with his wife, daughters, and three dogs.

More on Kit’s research and work can be found here.

Tyler Beeton, Research Associate III, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute (CFRI)
Tyler is a collaborative decision-support program manager, which includes managing, contributing to, and evaluating collaborative adaptive management processes with project partners and stakeholders. He leads social science assessments of landscape-scale collaborative forestry projects, coordinates and facilitates Potential Operational Delineation (PODs) workshops and evaluates how PODs and Risk Management Assistance products are used in incident and non-incident management contexts. Tyler holds an M.A. in anthropology, and he is working toward a PhD in Ecology and Human-Environment Interactions at Colorado State University.

More on Tyler’s research can be found here.

Potential Operational Delineations (PODs) was co-developed by the Rocky Mountain Research Station Wildfire Risk Management Science (WRMS) Team to pre-plan for fire and to give land managers a formal process for developing landscape-scale wildfire response options before fires start. PODs are spatial units or containers defined by potential control features, such as roads and ridge tops, within which relevant information on forest conditions, ecology, and fire potential can be summarized.

The Presentation

Join FAC NM as communities of New Mexico celebrate National Wildfire Preparedness Day by discussing advances in home wildfire risk assessments! In this 60-minute webinar, Chris Barth and James Meldrum from the Wildfire Research (WiRē) Team will speak about their recent publication on parcel-level risk. Their presentation will focus on the paired rapid assessment/household survey approach that the WiRē team has employed with partners and communities across the West. They will also discuss the effect home hazard assessments have on reducing the risk of property destruction and the importance of community-level risk reduction to address risk-spillovers across neighboring properties. Log on to learn more about reducing home hazard risk at the community level! Register now to attend the webinar via Zoom or tune in on the FACNM Facebook Live page.

The Speakers

Chris Barth, Fire Mitigation Specialist, BLM-Montana/Dakotas Fire & Aviation Management
Chris works with the public, internal and external partners, elected officials, and the media to communicate fire management strategies and disaster response, planning, and fire adaptation concepts. Chris has received several national awards for his work to reduce community wildfire risk. He is a founding member and subject matter expert for the Wildfire Research (WiRē) Team - with research interests in homeowners’ attitudes towards wildfire mitigation and public perception of wildfire risk. He has co-authored papers on homeowners’ attitudes towards wildfire mitigation and public perception of wildfire risk. He has also presented at national and international conferences related to his work in this field.

Chris has worked in fire management for more than 30 years. He is a Public Information Officer (PIO) on a Type 1 incident management. As a PIO, Chris’ communication style is shaped by his operational, professional, and research experiences. 

More on Chris’ research can be found here.

James Meldrum, Research Economist, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
James Meldrum is an applied research economist with the USGS’s Social and Economic Analysis branch in Fort Collins, CO. James is a founding member of the Wildfire Research (WiRē) Team, a long-standing collaboration between wildfire risk mitigation practitioners and social science researchers. Through more than 10 years of this partnership, he has published numerous journal articles on mitigating the risks of wildland fire. In addition to his work with the WiRē Team, James investigates the effects of natural resource decisions on people in numerous contexts, including fuels and fire management, ecosystem restoration, electricity generation, and the management of invasive species.

More on James’ research can be found here.

The Wildfire Research (WiRē) Team brings diverse expertise in economics, sociology, and wildfire risk mitigation to a multiyear research project on homeowner wildfire risk mitigation and community wildfire adaptedness.

JOIN THE FOREST STEWARDS GUILD!

BASIC FIREFIGHTER TRAINING (S-130) OFFERED AT GLORIETA ADVENTURE CAMPS

UPDATE: registration for S-130 field course being offered on 3/9/22 is currently full. Please follow the link above to register for our S-130 waitlist and we will contact you when another course is scheduled.

The Forest Stewards Guild, in cooperation with Glorieta Adventure Camps, is offering the required field-component of S-130, Basic Firefighter Training. The intent of S-130 is to train new firefighters in basic firefighting skills. The field component may be arduous in nature.

Participants will need to complete 25+ hours of online coursework prior to the event.

S-130 is part of the suite of classes required for basic wildland firefighters. The classroom portion of S-130, as well as all other classes required for basic wildland firefighter training, are available online. S-190, Introduction to Wildland Fire Behavior is a prerequisite and must be successfully completed prior to taking S-130.

S-130 Firefighter Training (Field Course)

This course is hands on training providing entry-level firefighting skills. Students will be taken to the field for a day of instruction covering:

• safety orientation

• firefighter preparedness

• tools and equipment

• firing devices

• use of water

• suppression

• securing the control line

• operating safely.

Registration is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Sam Berry at sam@forestguild.org

Simtable presented by the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition and Villages of Santa Fe and AARP

How does fire spread? How vulnerable is my neighborhood? Simtable creates wildfire simulations to show how fire spreads through communities. The topography of Santa Fe is projected onto a simulation table and the sand is contoured to match Santa Fe’s mountains, arroyos, and rolling hills. Wind speed and direction are factored in plus the available fuel and then fire AND, although fire might not be your concern, air quality might, so what is your evacuation plan?

Event Location: 1600 St Michael's Drive Bldg #2 - Public Safety Building, Santa Fe, NM 87505

Click HERE for a map to the event.

Focus Communities

At the times listed below, we will focus on certain communities and project their area on the the Simtable.

Please feel free to come to any session. At 6:00 we will have a session open to anyone and will decide where to do the fire simulation based on who is in attendance.

• 3:00 – Highway 14, Ranch Allegre

• 3:45 - Eastside

• 4:30 - 599 Corridor

• 5:15 -  Eldorado

• 6:00  - General Public

Videos and more information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Pn-aV5DtE 

http://www.simtable.com/emergency-management/fire/

This event will take place of our November Fireshed Ambassador meeting. Regular meetings will resume in January.

This is a free event, and will be in Spanish with subtitles and translation.

Uno de los Nuestros is a film chronicling wildfire in Spain and the firefighters that engage them.

The film will be followed with a panel discussion with Spanish firefighters and other firefighters from across the world to compare wildfire across the world.

How does nature respond to forest fires? What is society's response to forest fires? How do forest firefighters respond to social pressure and the dangers they face? 'Uno de los Nuestros' will help us understand resilience in both people and landscapes in Spain, a fundamental concept to understand the future of forest fires. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles.

 This event coincides with the Spanish Language TREX, an event that brings firefighters from across the Spanish Speaking world to Santa Fe to hone their prescribed fire skills.

The panel discussion will be hosted by Blanca Céspedes, a professor at Highlands University, and the panel will be in Spanish and translated to English.

View the trailer for the film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsZ7qqSWqyU

The Forest Stewards Guild, The Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition, and the Nature Conservancy of New Mexico is pleased to bring Uno de los Nuestros to Santa Fe.

Please join us to visit the Pacheco Canyon Prescribed Fire.

On September, 14th 2019

On May 5th 2019, the 500 acre Pacheco Canyon Rx Burn block was completed east of Tesuque. The burn was a collaborative effort with led by the US Forest Service, with participation from the National Park service, The Pueblo of Tesuque, Santa Fe County Fire department, Santa Fe City Fire department and Forest Stewards Guild.

This field trip will be a chance to visit the site of the burn with fire ecologists and the wildland firefighters that implemented the burn to learn about the effects of prescribed fire within the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed. We will have a short presentation about the project and then time to walk the site and converse with representatives from the Forest Service and other Fireshed Partners.

For more information contact Sam Berry at: sam@forestguild.org or Hannah Bergemann at: hannah.bergemann@usda.gov

Participation is limited to the first 25 individuals to register due to transportation limitations and parking at the field site.

Please RSVP using the form below.

Schedule:

8:30 am - Meet at Santa Fe City Fire Station 1 (200 Murales Rd)

8:45 am - Vans depart Fire Station 1 for the Pacheco Rx Burn, transportation will be provided

12:00 pm (approximate) - Arrive back at Station 1