When the South Fork Fire burned through Ruidoso destroying hundreds of buildings, some homes were spared simply because of the efforts taken by homeowners.
During a Legislative Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday, a panel laid out ways that people and communities can better prepare for fires and increase the chances of their homes surviving the blaze.
The panel included Steve Hawks, the senior director for wildfire with the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS).
Hawks said that when the fuel, weather and topographic features are right, wildfires can transform into high intensity blazes with the potential for conflagration. He explained that conflagration is when a fire spreads uncontrollably from one structure to another.
IBHS focuses on “narrowing the path to and lessening the impacts from these conflagration fires,” Hawks said.
This can occur both on individual private properties and at a community scale.
Hawks started by discussing the impacts that humans have on wildfire risk. He said that humans are responsible for about 80 percent of wildfire ignitions.
“Increasing population means more humans, more people, more structures and more densely spaced structures in wildfire prone areas,” he said.
In New Mexico, human development is coupled with ongoing drought conditions linked to climate change and the potential for strong winds that can drive rapid fire growth.
State Forester Laura McCarthy said that the South Fork Fire grew in one day to encompass an area that fire managers had initially thought would take four days to burn. The majority of the fire’s growth occurred that first day.
“Wind is the single biggest factor that drives extreme fire behavior and the development of conflagration,” Hawks said.
During his presentation, Hawks showed a picture of the area burned by the South Fork fire. He said the picture shows how there was a high-intensity crown fire as the blaze approached the community. Past efforts to reduce fuels surrounding Ruidoso made a difference. The fire’s intensity decreased. The picture shows that it changed from burning in the canopies of trees to burning primarily on the ground.
“This is what we want to see as it approaches the community, that fire behavior becomes moderated,” he said.
Additional efforts in the community, such as landscaping outside of individual homes, made a difference in how the South Fork fire spread.
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To protect communities against conflagration, Hawks said officials should look at existing factors such as what type of fuels surround the community or are within the neighborhoods. Those fuels provide pathways for fire to burn through the community. Another factor he said should be considered is how close the structures are to each other. He said the building materials used for the houses can also impact whether the fire will move through the neighborhood.
After evaluating those factors, Hawks said an implementable plan can be developed.
He said that IBHS is developing a community-level risk reduction program that it calls the Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood.
“It’s important to note that this program is not a one-size fits all program,” he said. “We know that every community is unique for many reasons, and those reasons need to be evaluated individually.”
The Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood program will include a fuel reduction component intended to reduce the likelihood of the fire entering the community to begin with. At the same time, Hawks said embers have the potential to travel long distances and ignite structures or vegetation within communities even if the main fire doesn’t make it to the neighborhoods.
Because of that, the program will include what Hawks described as “parcel-level risk reduction.” That involves measures that individual homeowners should take including landscaping. One key component of that landscaping is keeping the five-feet of space surrounding the home clear of vegetation.
Another way that homeowners can protect their property is by clearing debris from gutters.
The risk of wildfires in New Mexico is making it harder for homeowners to even acquire insurance and is driving up the price of premiums. McCarthy said implementing measures to make homes more resilient to wildfire will be necessary if the state hopes to maintain access to affordable home insurance for people in fire prone areas.
One challenge when it comes to landscaping is that not everyone is willing to cut down trees or reduce vegetation near their house. For some people, that is because they can’t afford to pay people to cut down trees.
McCarthy said it is important to have grant funding available for local governments to assess existing properties and for home resiliency grants.
Several New Mexico communities have received federal grant funding this year to help reduce the likelihood of fires spreading from structure to structure.
For example, the Village of Ruidoso Forestry Department has been awarded $1.2 million to expand and improve a program that is intended to decrease flammable material within the village boundaries and create fuel breaks and defensible space around structures.
Removing fuels and creating defensible space around structures are only one of the ways that New Mexico hopes to prevent future devastating fires from sweeping through communities.
McCarthy said updating the building codes in fire prone areas can also help reduce how many structures are lost. Some counties have already updated their building codes to account for the increasing risk of wildfires. Those include Santa Fe and Taos counties.
But not all counties share that same high risk of wildfires and McCarthy said the building codes needed in high risk areas are not necessarily important in areas with lower risk of catastrophic wildfire.
She said mapping to show which areas are at greater risk of wildfire could also help home buyers make educated decisions.
New Mexico is also looking at ways that it can reduce the number of fires.
While the South Fork fire started due to a lightning strike, humans are still the number one cause of wildfire.
“We know that 80 percent of our fires are started by people,” McCarthy said.
She said that Utah has seen a 60 percent reduction in the number of fires started by humans over the course of four years. That decrease is due to a $600,000 per year public education campaign.