Wildfire Wednesdays #37: Chipping - Home Hardening - Eastern Jemez Landscape Futures

Hi Fireshed Members,

‘Tis the season for informational webinars about wildfire adaptation. Grab your favorite snack, send the link to a neighbor or colleague who might share your enthusiasm, and tune in to these great informational sessions to get ideas about how you can take action in your community this upcoming Spring.

This week’s edition of Wildfire Wednesday features:

• Chipping Best Practices Webinar tomorrow, December 10th

• A Wildfire Home Retrofit Workshop for fire professionals and educators (community leaders)

• East Jemez Landscape Futures: A collaborative approach to post-fire

Stay safe,

Gabe 

Chipping Best Practices Webinar Tomorrow!

1 PM MST on December 10

Join wildland mitigation subject matter expert Jeremy Taylor and RSG! Program staff for a Best Practices Webinar on Chipping Programs.

Click here for webinar registration.

 We’ll cover:

• Considerations when launching a chipper program

• Promoting the program/engaging the community to participate

• Operational considerations

• Funding opportunities/mechanisms

We also will be introducing a new opportunity available to program members to support chipping programs in their response area.

A Wildfire Home Retrofit Workshop for fire professionals and educators

December 15th, at 10am MST

For the full agenda, and to register, click here.

Fire professionals and educators are invited to join our FREE virtual Wildfire Home Retrofit Workshop. Please share this invitation with your peers or other fire professionals and educators you know.

During this interactive workshop, attendees will learn:

• How homes are threatened during a wildfire

• How to identify a home’s ember vulnerabilities and prioritize retrofits based on cost, effort and location scenarios

• How to effectively communicate home hardening techniques to homeowners throughout the U.S.

There will be opportunities to share ideas, experiences and best practices as well as opportunities to ask questions during multiple Q&A sessions.

East Jemez Landscape Futures: A collaborative approach to post-fire

December 15th, 12pm MST

Click here to register!

The East Jemez Landscape Futures (EJLF) project is a collaborative, landscape-scale approach to help guide future planning and research efforts in the severely altered landscapes of the eastern Jemez Mountains. EJLF seeks to address uncertainty by building a network of land managers, scientists, artists, NGOs and interested community members to inform future management, identify research needs, and capture stories from individuals and communities who were affected by these changes.

This webinar will share the EJLF experience and lessons learned responding to the complex questions of post-fire landscapes. Hosted by the Burned Area Learning Network and the Southwest Fire Science Consortium

Presenters: Colin Haffey, Sasha Stortz, and Savannah Lehnert

Wildfire Wednesdays #36: Structure Loss Data - Pile Burns on SFNF

Hi Fireshed Members,   

As winter sets in, this is a great time to take a step back and make a plan to prepare your home and property for wildfire in 2021. Starting to make a plan now will allow you to work efficiently in the spring and will be a lot less stressful that trying to plan and complete projects in the spring and summer, which are always busy.  

This Wildfire Wednesdays features:  

• Data for structures burned by wildfire in each state 

• Prescribed fire and pile burning in Northern New Mexico 

Best,

Gabe 

Data for Structures Burned by Wildfire in Each State: A Tool to Communicate Wildfire Effects 

The traditional way — and the easiest way — to compare wildfire seasons is the number of acres burned. But blackened acres does not tell the whole story about the effects of fires on humans. A new, user-friendly database by Headwaters Economics identifies the number of structures, by state, destroyed by wildfires between 2005 and 2020. This is a powerful tool for communicating the importance of preparing our home ignition zones for wildfire.   

To learn more about the tool, click here.  

To use the tool for yourself, click here.  

Santa Fe National Forest May Implement Hyde Park, Thompson Ridge Pile Burns this Week 

Dec. 1, 2020 - Fire managers on the Santa Fe National Forest (SFNF) are looking at a potential window this week to implement the previously announced Hyde Park and Thompson Ridge prescribed pile burns to reduce the risk of wildfire. 

The 132-acre Hyde Park pile burn near Black Canyon Campground on the Espanola Ranger District is designed to eliminate woody debris from a nearby thinning project within the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed.  

The 1-acre Thompson Ridge slash pit prescribed burn is a collaborative effort between the Jemez Ranger District and the surrounding area to promote Fire Adapted Communities.  

To learn more about these two pile burns, click here for the full news release.

Wildfire Wednesdays #35: Turkey and Leaves - Prescribed Burn Associations

Hi Fireshed Members,  

I hope you all have a happy and safe Thanksgiving. After the turkey and potatoes, if you want to work up a sweat without leaving your house, get your favorite family member to help you rake the yard and clean the gutters... I'm sure they’ll love it.  

This edition of Wildfire Wednesday is a brief one.  

Stay Safe,  

Gabe 

Prescribed Burn Associations: A Webinar by The Cohesive Strategy 

Mark your calendars for Thursday, December 10th from 9 - 10:30am pst.  

As part of their ongoing Living with Wildland Fire learning series, The Western Region of the Fire Leadership Council presents a webinar about Prescribed Burn Associations and the different approaches they take in different places. Prescribed Burn Associations are more common in the Southeast part of the country and have been widely recognized as a powerful way to build local capacity and acceptance for the use of prescribed fire as a tool for wildfire risk reduction.  

Don’t take my word for it, check the webinar out yourself by clicking here. 

Wildfire Wednesdays #34: Wildfire Wednesdays Live Tonight - Home Hazard Assessment

Hi Fireshed Members,

Wildfire Wednesdays Live is on tonight at 6pm. Information below.

Also, our partners at Fire Adapted Communities New Mexico (FAC NM) plan to host more virtual peer-learning opportunities this winter. The goal is to build the connections and common understanding needed to mobilize our communities for wildfire adaptation work leading into the 2021 fire season.

They want to hear from you. To capture the topics that you are most interested in, please take a couple minutes and fill out this brief survey.  To respond with your interests, click here.

This week’s Wildfire Wednesday newsletter features:

• Information about Wildfire Wednesday Live, tonight at 6pm!

• Re-introducing the Home Hazard Assessment

Best,

Gabe

Wildfire Wednesdays Live, Tonight at 6pm!

After a couple week hiatus we are back on for Wildfire Wednesdays Live tonight. Previous sessions introduced The Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition and provided some background fire ecology information for the Fireshed landscape. This week’s session will build on these past two livestreams by focusing individual risk and actions of residents within the Santa Fe Fireshed landscape.

To join the Facebook livestream at 6pm on Wednesday, November 18th, click here.

Home Hazard Assessment

The prospect of preparing your home for fire season can seem overwhelming, since planning for any disaster means imaging the worst. So, to get started the best thing to do is to create a plan and then begin with the easiest tasks.

To assist in making a plan we’d like to re-introduce the Home Hazard Assessment Guide. With this guide and the accompanying worksheet you can assess the areas of your home that could use improvement and then keep track as you work to improve them. This short guide covers all the areas that you might be concerned about that might cause your home to ignite.

To access the Home Hazard Assessment, click here.

Wildfire Wednesdays #33: Wildfire Wednesdays Live - WUFS Recordings

Hello Fireshed Members,

It is Veteran’s Day and I want to say thank you to those that have served in the armed forces. A special thank you to all veterans that continue to serve our country as firefighters through New Mexico State Forestry’s Returning Heroes Wildland Fire Program and other programs nationwide.

This Wildfire Wednesdays features:

• Information about the next Wildfire Wednesdays Live on November 18th

• Recordings of sessions from the 2020 Wildland Urban Fire Summit

Best,

Gabe

Wildfire Wednesdays Live on November 18th

Wildfire Wednesdays Live is postponed tonight in honor of Veterans Day and all of those who have served in the military. We will begin again on November 18th. Stay tuned for details about the November 18th session.

2020 Wildland Urban Fire Summit Recordings

Check out the recordings from this year’s Wildland Urban Fire Summit (WUFS). The Wildland Urban Fire Summit (WUFS) is one of New Mexico’s leading events for wildfire preparedness and planning. Each year, community leaders, fire service professionals, and federal, state, tribal, and local governments collaborate to create this summit. Check out the informative sessions to learn from communities adapting to a wildfire environment about the latest techniques, strategies, and resources for wildfire adaptation and resilience.

To access links to the recording, click here.