By Mary Alice Murphy

About 60 people living in the Pinos Altos Volunteer Fire Department area, many from Pinos Altos and the surrounding region, met in a chilly Opera House to hear from several speakers.

Damie Nelson, the organizer of the meeting, said she wanted to get residents together, not only to hear about how they can prevent wildfires burning their properties, but to create some committees to help in case of fire. "I hope this will be the first of many gatherings to address fire prevention and mitigation."

She said she and her husband, Carl Levi, moved to the PA area from Silver City. "We enjoy eating dinner on our deck in the summer, watching the birds, hearing the coyotes, and we mostly enjoy the deer" to chuckles from the audience.

"Two summers ago, we had the Rico fire come very close to town," Nelson continued. "We evacuated, although we were not required to, and we stayed with friends in Tyrone. We watched the smoke and the air attacks and wondered what was happening. We were lucky that year thanks to a quick response and favorable winds."

She said that she posted on social media asking if anyone was interested in meeting to discuss the situation. With a positive reply, "I set up this meeting."

Nelson noted that the drought has increased over the years, and "we are faced with what is predicted to be an extreme fire season. And the first fires have already started in parts of New Mexico."

The first to speak was the former PAVFD fire chief Lucy Whitmarsh, who has been involved in volunteer fire and rescue for 19 years. "We live in Dos Griegos on the other side of the hill. We, in that subdivision, have become a Firewise community. We, as a neighborhood, realized that we lived virtually in the forest and needed to do something to protect ourselves." She pointed to the piles of handouts that she had brought to help people understand the dangers and how to make their properties fire resistant.

Whitmarsh said the volunteer fire departments are a valuable resource for the community. She encouraged anyone interested to apply, with the only requirements being at least 18 years old, holding a valid New Mexico driver's license and being able-bodied.

She invited those members of the PAVFD to stand, and several were in attendance. She also introduced Brad Clark, who is the Pinos Altos station battalion chief.

Whitmarsh then listed several things that the VFDs can do for their residents. One is if someone is doing tree trimming or something to contact the Fire Department and they can make recommendations for how to stack the branches and then if requested, they can come help the resident burn their piles.

She noted that the training to be a volunteer firefighter consists of the same training as required by paid firefighters. "We have to be as trained as they are, because fire doesn't know if you're paid or volunteer. Whitmarsh said, when she started with the fire service, she learned that municipal fire fighters don't know much about a brush fire, because they predominantly deal with structure fires. But now they take the same classes we do. I think the most valuable one that we have that applies to what we're talking about today is wildfire in the wildland urban interface."

She said the Rico fire is an example of cooperation between the Forest Service, the volunteer fire departments, and also the municipal department. She said the primary goal of what the volunteer fire departments did was to protect the structures that could possibly be ignited during the fire and then also to support water service for the Forest Service.

Fighting fires has a coordinated, unified command that has a specific structure to it, and that's what makes it very effective. She said sometimes they have had problems with communications between agencies, "but I think that's kind of been worked out pretty well. So there's a lot of cooperation on all levels, from national, state to local."

Whitmarsh noted that when Dos Griegos decided to become a Firewise community, the Silver City Fire Department helped them. "But you don't have to be an official Firewise community to do fire mitigation. And the first part of it is kind of an awareness kind of thing. And the best situation is, if a fire doesn't start, that's the best case."

She said so many things can cause a fire, including a vehicle traveling down a road dragging a chain, which creates sparks, as can outdoor welding, which also sparks and, in a hypothetical example, a spark can go under a shed and all of a sudden the shed is on fire. "In the kind of conditions that we have now that can happen, and especially with the wind, and so you can do some really simple things, like, don't park any vehicle on the grass."

She cited the Quail Ridge Fire, which occurred when a vehicle parked on the grass and started a fire that spread into a subdivision on the other side of Ridge Road. They thought that the road would stop it, but the winds carried it right over and destroyed homes. Those that didn't burn had mitigated their properties by keeping weeds and grass down and not having bushes or trees close to the houses.

"The problem with Quail Ridge and with Rico were the embers, which can go as far as two miles in the wind," Whitmarsh said. "With a forest fire, you want to keep the fire on the ground and not getting up into the crowns of trees. If the wind collects leaves around your house or in your gutters, clean them, because that keeps a fire from having any fuel. You should also keep lower branches on trees trimmed up, so that the fire cannot climb into the trees. If you have two trees close together, is is best to try to trim them so there is space between them.

She told the attendees that Grant County has a chipper that it rents out to residents who want to chip their tree trimmings. With larger branches, the resident may want to keep them for firewood. And it is always best to keep a firewood pile at least 50 feet away from the residence.

Keep the house shut as tightly as possible, close curtains and close pet doors so that critters cannot get into your house during a fire.

"You can have somebody come and look at your property and make recommendations, but that's what they are— recommendations that you do not have to completely comply with" Whitmarsh said. "We don't have any regulatory abilities. I think it's intentional. And even in the Firewise communities, they do an assessment. They let you know what the problem areas are, but the mitigation of them is up to you, if you're interested in doing that. And so the more people that take care of their properties, the better it is for everybody, because you won't have fires spreading from one lot to another."

Clark then spoke. "I've been around fires for a long time. This year makes 50 years of mostly structural, but I've done a lot of wild land fire fighting as well with BLM and the Forest Service."

He noted that probably the biggest question everybody has right now is "what does our fire season look like this year? Things are extremely dry, extremely dry! If you have a pile that you want burned, it ain't going to happen right now. Forest Service property is under stage one fire restrictions, which means you can have a fire inside a rock ring. You can still use a charcoal grill, you can still use a gas grill and stuff inside the fire ring. The county is going to bring those restrictions to us as well, which means you're not going to be able to burn. It is so dry, we are so far behind in our moisture this year. The Forest Service does testing weekly up in the forest. They go into areas, they drill holes in trees, and they measure the moisture inside the trees. The trees are extremely dry. I know you don't want to be told what to do. I'm going to say this to help with neighbors and friends. You're going to need to do some cleanup around your houses. I'm not saying it's mandatory. I'm gonna ask, because it makes our life easier. One of the saving graces with the Rico fire two years ago was that BLM had been into this area over west of us, thinning and cutting down trees, opening things up, cutting underbrush that saved us. It honestly did. After the fire start, I was on the fire line."

Clark said the fire was much easier to fight in a lot of places where it had been thinned. "So with this, as the fire comes towards us, a lot of times what do the fire department and the Forest Service do? We drive through a neighborhood and we triage homes. We look at the house to see whether or not it's saveable, whether it's going to be worth the effort of the department to put people on that and bypass other structures to protect ones that are are defensive. We look at the house, we look at the structure. We look where trees are. We look at grasses. We look at trees overhanging the house, the type of structure, whether it be wood with shingles, does it have a metal roof? Is it stucco? We look at all of this and it helps us."

He noted that some insurance companies are saying now that nothing can be over any house, and you literally have to have a clear zone of vegetation at least five feet out from the house. Clark also said the members of the VFD will come out to homes and make recommendations on what needs to be done to make the home safer from fire. As a guide, he said for the limbing up of trees, if the resident can walk under the branches of the trees without having to duck,that's good.

He also addressed the things people are saying that the government has cut the firefighters and no one will be available to fight fires. "That is not true, the Firebase and Silver Fire Department, the Silver Hot Shot crews and stuff like this are fully staffed. Before long, you're going to start seeing fire. The green fire wagons from out of state are going to be down here doing patrols. Our firefighting is we're fully staffed for the Forest Service. The fire base, with tankers, and the heliport and stuff like this is already open, and they're bringing more people in, so you don't have to worry that we aren't going to have Forest Service."

One of the residents said the groups can get together to rent the county chipper, but "it's a beast and hard to feed stuff into it. We do it over in Dos Griegos every year."

Whitmarsh said people could call the VFD number or call the county fire chief about renting the chipper. She also noted that one of her handouts had the contact for the local state forester, who can also do mitigation assessments for properties.

She also announced that on April 12, a meeting with BLM, the Forest Service and the PAVFD fire chief would take place at the Pinos Altos Fire Station to talk about what is going on in the fire scene.

A resident asked if Firewise makes a difference for insurance.

Whitmarsh replied. "It does not make any difference to the insurance companies. It makes a big difference to the homeowners. If you don't want your house to burn down, it's good to do fire mitigation and be in the fire wise community where everybody else is doing fire mitigation, too. So there is a benefit, but it isn't from the insurance companies."

Another attendee asked if it helped to water their junipers. Clark replied that healthy trees can better withstand fire. He noted that because of the lack of moisture over the past year, most trees, as they get ready to bloom, are going into the early stages of stress.

The next speakers were Jason Neal and Alyssa Armstrong. Armstrong said they come from a background of conservation and are really into creating their property to be more park-like to provide fire mitigation."We're really excited to help people create defensible space."

Neal said he has a background in trails. He talked about bushy trees like alligator juniper and oak that if not trimmed properly can become bushy and hard to mitigate. He also encouraged, not just a 5-foot space between the house and shrubs and trees, but more like 10 to 30 feet. He said when they moved into their property in 2022, they had cut a lot of the small stuff to prevent it from becoming bushy. They have also created swales to draw any water to their trees to keep them healthy.

He also recommended that if anyone wanted to burn a pile, not this year, because of restrictions, but in another year to call the VFD and get them to come and help and even bring an engine to control the fire if it gets out of hand.

Carl  Levi said he and his wife have packed up things that cannot be replaced, such as albums, art work and things they have gathered in their travels, and they rent a storage unit and put them there during fire season until the monsoons hit. He said he was not giving an endorsement, but they had chosen U-Store It, because it looked to them like it would be the last place to burn in Silver City.

Attendees were also invited to pick up the handouts and to sign up for committees, including a steering committee, a phone tree and a weed whack brigade.