Something's Burning: Protecting Cloudcroft Where Wildland and Village Meet
Part Two of the Local Forest Service Fire Management Officers' chat with Cloudcroft Reader on our district's changing fire conditions, their team efforts, and what we can do to protect our homes.
Part Two of Cloudcroft Reader’s interview of the Sacramento Ranger District Fire Management team in the Ranger Station office on September 4th. This article runs longer than most but we believe it contains a great deal of valuable information and is worth your time and attention.
Be sure to check out Part One, Battling Fires in Cloudcroft: The Long Game.

Cloudcroft Reader recently spoke with Caleb Finch, the Sacramento Ranger District Fire Management Officer, and his team, Suppression Assistant Fire Management Officer Wendell Housler and Fuels Assistant Fire Management Officer Matthew Barone.
They have plenty to share on prescribed burns, plans to protect Cloudcroft, how property owners can prepare for an event, and what can be done to mitigate fire risk.
This report contains the following (click on any link to visit that section):
Two-Prong Approach: Active Fire Suppression and Fuels Treatments
Local District with National Resources and the Smokey Bear Message
Two-Prong Approach: Active Fire Suppression and Fuels Treatments
This has been Matthew Barone's first year since retiring as superintendent for the Sacramento Hotshot crew and serving as the Fuels Assistant Fire Management Officer (AFMO).
Barone says,
"The Hotshots had quite a stint here as far as fire management goes. The hotshots are a national resource. I'm getting locked down and seeing how busy it is here (in the Sacramento area) because I've always been gone and didn't really get to experience what fire management's like right here on the mountain, and it's pretty in-depth and dynamic. I've really enjoyed it."
Now, Barone oversees fire fuels treatment, which involves a wide range of strategies, including mastication projects, thinning projects, commercial thinning, and prescribed fires. Barone says, "prescribed fires are more down my alley."
Barone: "We just treated close to 4,000 acres out by Mayhill, New Mexico, last fall and this spring. We have prescribed fire units planned for this October, November."
"There are scenarios where we can go in and be successful with prescribed fire in the spring, but typically spring's our windy, dry season. Then we have our monsoon season, which is hard to get fuel to burn. So we come after monsoon season when we get some frost. With our winters in this region, we can meet our targets and some of our prescriptions."
"With prescribed fire, we're not ripping it all off. We come from the standpoint that it's a fire-adapted ecosystem, and fire was here before all the Europeans were here. This country burned regularly, and it's all part of our forest health program."
The Science Behind RX Burns: Windows of Weather
Barone says, "If you were to go out and look at what we accomplished last fall, you'd be like, did you guys really burn this? Because it's all lush and green and grass. We've eliminated a lot of that debris buildup on the forest floor."
Finch adds, "We're using fire as a tool to treat large landscapes. There's a lot of science that comes into play. Because you can burn where it's a little too hot, you're starting to be detrimental to the ecosystem. You can burn where it's too cool and not treat the ecosystem. So there's a fine balance between windows of weather."
Housler explains their burn strategy:
"Along our control lines, it's very surgical. We use patterns to accomplish those goals and enclose the unit. And then we may try to get higher intensity burn in the middle once we have those control lines established."
"That's called 'black lining.' We're removing fuels with fire along the control lines to have a higher-intensity fire that accomplishes more of our goals. Some of our goals in certain fuel types may be to cause 50% mortality in certain tree species. It's not at natural levels. But we can't burn that across the whole unit to accomplish those goals."
Finch describes the shape of the burns:
"While we typically burn in the spring, our focus from the fall to winter is to create that catcher's mitt on the black landscape. When our winds are come southwest to the northeast, we'll focus on building a perimeter on the south and the north. And then we'll save the interior to burn in the spring if we can because it requires some higher intensity, hotter temperatures to knock back some of the vegetation there. But creating a catcher's mitt so many feet wide creates an area where that fire can't move beyond the control line."
The burns don’t just focus on the understory and grasses. According to Barone, they create more fire-tolerant trees.
Barone: "Stand replacement is where it crowns the whole tree. Everything just sticks after the fire goes through, instead of the fire just staying on the ground."
"When Caleb talked about raising canopies, that prescribed fire scorches the bottom ends of the trees, and as they grow, they get a higher tolerance of wildfire coming through and staying on the ground instead of replacing the whole timber stand."
"Like black lining, once that's black, it's not going to burn again until it regrows and dies out the next season. When we say, 'We're burning these units to do this spring unit,' that will all go into black, which won't burn again. That's where fire resources like hotshots typically use the black—as their safety zones. If something gets kind of squirrely on them, they will retreat into the black because they know it won't burn again."
Finch adds,
"If you think about how fires moved across the landscape prior to all suppression activities occurring well over 100 years ago, prior to European settlers, it happened throughout various times of the year. And so you would have a fire that moved across at higher intensities in the different fuel types, and then you'd have a fire that moves across at lower intensity."
"When we're implementing prescribed fire, we do our best to mimic that mosaic pattern so you have a low intensity and a higher intensity. That's that's just the nature of fire across the landscape, and the ecosystem responds incredibly to it."
All Hands on Deck: Fire Suppression
The second prong in fire management is suppression, or putting them out. Wendell Housler, the Suppression Assistant Fire Management Officer (AFMO), talks shop.
Housler says, "To start moving (resources) around, it's like a big chess game. You move all your resources over here, and you've just created a void there—you've got to backfill that and prepare for that. It's a lot of moving parts."
Housler: "My specific focus is suppression and prevention. I oversee the engine program, which is the wildland fire engines in the district, and the fire prevention program."
"My responsibility is to respond to any fire or even potential fire starts and reported fire starts. Any one of us can step into these roles, but that's my primary role."
"We have four wildland fire engines just here in the district. When they're fully staffed in the summer with seasonals, they're staffed between five and seven employees on each engine. And then we have a fire prevention program, and those are the folks that go out and patrol and make contact with the campers, do the public appearances with Smokey Bear at schools, the libraries, the public events."
"They're getting the message out there, and when they're not doing that, they're out patrolling the campgrounds, patrolling the dispersed camping, and making sure folks are extinguishing their campfires."
"When it comes to fire suppression and readiness, the engine (crews) are seasonal. Like everything else, we have permanent employees on the engines, but then we ramp up in the spring, our typical fire season."
Housler: “I hesitate to use the words ‘fire season’ anymore because it's not just three months of the year; it's year-round in this district specifically.”
Finch says, "You have support from what we call the Regional Office. So, as an incident emerges, Wendell supports that incident, and he orders resources; the regional office then starts to order resources outside of the region to come in and bolster those other resources. So it's a top-down, bottom-up effort."
Finch continues,
"Wendell and Matt both do a great job of partnering relationships. Our key players are Otero County, the Village of Cloudcroft, New Mexico State Forestry, the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and the Bureau of Land Management."
"Every spring, we get together and have a pre-season meeting. Ours, this last spring was one or two days before the Timberon Fire took place. We discuss preparedness and response and support, aviation assets, what we can do, anything new, and any new policies. But we don't just talk during that meeting. We talk year-round, constantly talking year-round".
"Because when it happens, it's basically all hands on deck."
When wildland fires break out, the Forest Service responds regardless of whether the blaze is on private or public lands.
Finch explains:
"We respond to all fires within the district boundary, and we have the authority to respond to fires on private property and Bureau of Land Management and State Forestry because private property falls under the umbrella of New Mexico State Forestry. So, though it may be private, we always respond to anything."
"Suppose it's outside the forest's perimeter or our initial attack zone. If it's within a mile, we respond anyway because it's always considered a threat to the National Forest or the values that fall under the delegation of authority for our interagency partners."
Housler says, "It doesn't matter where a fire starts. It is a new start. Fire doesn't respect boundaries."
Ongoing Sacramento Mountain Projects (and What’s to Come)
At the Cloudcroft Fire Risk forum, Finch presented ongoing and future projects, including prescribed burns. You can catch that breakdown here.
Housler talks about treating different landscapes and their unique challenges. He says,
"When talking 16 Springs, we're talking about the entire watershed — everything from James Ridge down into Elk Canyon. It's a large landscape. A lot of people think about the canyon bottom, which is where the subdivisions are. And that's not what we're treating. We're treating the entire watershed. It's high, steep terrain down to the canyon bottoms."
"When you talk about these steeper slopes, it's much more challenging to treat. And when you look at, say, the Highway 82 corridor coming up from Alamogordo, that is a chimney, a continuous fuel type that runs up towards Cloudcroft. But to treat that landscape, what else have we got in there? Subdivisions. We've got private land and houses in there, so to try and treat that as a landscape, that's a tremendous challenge. We have to take on it because it has to be done."
"The Cloudcroft Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) project is one of the things we're targeting because Cloudcroft is vulnerable to those types of situations. The Cloudcroft WUI and some of the lower stuff down Highway 82 are still in the planning stages. I don't think we've done anything in the last twenty years on any of that for prescribed fire or anything like that."
Barone says, "Our challenge is the fuels, the weather, and the terrain. You look at the terrain across the landscape, the west side compared to the east side, the fuel conditions, and just Mother Nature. These wind events that come in April and May blow your hats off. Once that fire gets going, it's you against Mother Nature, and it's like trying to stop a hurricane."
Finch describes the various vegetation types throughout the landscape and how they are on different timelines.
"The project itself that we're implementing is within a 25,000-acre perimeter. We can apply various tools to treat the vegetation within 16 Springs. We see many prescribed fires on the eastern side of the project area because that fuel type—piñon, juniper, ponderosa pine—is more suitable to prescribe fire. But as you transition to the higher elevation, you get into this mixed conifer, the short-needle conifer versus the long-needle ponderosa pine; the short-needle conifer has a different fire regime. Ponderosa pine, on average, would burn every three to five years. When you get into this mixed conifer, the fire regime is a 100-year fire regime."
Housler adds, "100 to 250 years, depending on the slope and what type of fuel you're in. So we're talking timescales that are way outside of the human lifespan. And that's what we're dealing with when treating the natural environment. We're not worrying about my time here, my 28 years in the district. It's a blip on the radar. We have to think about the long-term."
Finch describes designing projects around the Village:
"And it's typically stand-replacing wildfire. That's what mixed conifer is known for; its opportunity to treat with prescribed fire is very narrow and very difficult because of how it's designed to burn by itself."
"In this mixed conifer country, during the late 90s and early 2000s, the previous fire managers were actually treated within a mile of the entire Village of Cloudcroft. There has been pretty heavy timber removal and a lot of dead and down material removed from here from roughly three-quarters of a mile, which includes all the way down around the trestle, around Bailey Corner."
"The other thing that we have to look at when we talk about projects is where is the likelihood of a fire start. Where does it begin, and where does it end? And so when we consider that, we design the projects."
"Then we design the treatments of what is needed for that vegetation. If you look at (Highway) 82 on the north side of 82, all those oak fields are old fire scars from when the railroad was right there. They burned at the top and then stopped. Those oak fields are not susceptible to fire, except maybe the last two weeks of June when it's hot or dry. But they must have a force of fire to move through them."
"On the opposite side of Highway 82, on the south side of Highway 82, where you have the private property, it's important for those private property owners to do their part and clean up around their property. In the forest, what we're going to do with Cloudcroft WUI is to go back in and re-thin and re-treat what's grown over the last 20 years. Because the treatment around the Village of Cloudcroft is still relatively clean. It doesn't look like it when you're looking at it from Highway 82, and you look at the forest, but when you get on the ground, it's relatively open and clear."
"What we're doing is working on going through the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) process and the surveys to get back in there with mechanical treatment and basically re-treat everything that's grown up in the last 20 years. The project itself is 2,965 acres. It extends out to the west, one mile from here. And then as it moves around to the south and the north, it draws closer to the Village of Cloudcroft. And the reason it does that is the majority of our fires come from the southwest and burn to the northeast. So if a fire's going to impact, via the forest, it's going to come from the southwest, and so you want a larger buffer to the southwest of Cloudcroft than you would on the east side of Cloudcroft."
Barone elaborates on mitigation treatments, saying, "Because of the prolonged winds in the spring or out of the Southwest, prescribed fire might not be the answer. Sometimes, it's mastication with heavy equipment or commercial thinning."
Barone continues when asked about the mastication machinery the team uses,
"It's like a piece of heavy equipment with a rotating blade that mulches it down and brings it right down to the ground. They can also treat existing down and dead trees. We have some mastication units out by James Ridge Lookout that have been getting worked on, and from what I've seen out there, those treatments not only provide protection to communities, but they allow suppression resources to get in there and do something where our firefighters can engage on the fire."
Their projects have a wide range. Barone says, "Everything from removing down and dead next to control lines, to almost thinning next to control lines to regulate heat from fire personnel. We are working with local permittees who are running cattle and will help move lines and protect their infrastructure for the project."
Aligning Moving Parts: Seasons, Staff, and Surveys
When asked about the employee structure and staff for the Fire Management team, Finch says,
"There are three Fire Management Officers. There's the district, my position, and then the two assistants. Under that, it fluctuates between summer and winter. So in the summer, if you count all the engine crews, the prevention, the hotshot crew, and the fuels crew, with seasonals, it is employees that are just strictly based on fire and fuels. When we collapse in the winter and lose all of our summer employment, we collapse to about 28 permanent employees."
Staffing cycles increase in the summer, along with fire danger.
Finch says, "But in our line of work, it's also seasonal. So we have four seasons. So our work is based on the season."
Like prescribed burns, fire mitigation projects go through layers of approval through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Finch says,
"It has to get cleared through the NEPA process."
"There are three primary surveys that have to take place. There are wildlife surveys because the Sacramento Mountains are known as a 'sky island;' it's this lush ecosystem that harbors a lot of wildlife species, and wildlife has a very diverse ecosystem. Not only that but there are plant species that are threatened and a variety of wildlife species that have to be surveyed because we need to make sure that we're not going to impact that wildlife species or that habitat before we go in there and we treat."
Housler adds, “We're going to impact it, but we don't want to negatively impact it.”
Finch continues,
"There's what's called a botany survey. Surveyors will go out and look for various plant species. So for Cloudcroft WUI, this summer, the botany surveys and the wildlife surveys will be completed here by the end of September."
"There are also heritage surveys, which are archaeological surveys. There are various sensitive sites across the Sacramento Mountains that date back to many, many years ago. And so we have to treat those sites and make sure that our treatments don't negatively impact those unique archaeological sites. There will be things like burial sites, for instance, or artifacts."
Once an NEPA decision is made, a project becomes feasible.
Finch says,
"So there's planning for the project, and then there's implementing the project. And we have to make sure that projects are in sync and moving along at the same time. That's just a very cyclical process throughout the year. And that's why a lot of our jobs are based on seasons. There are fire seasons and fuel seasons. There's winter, there's fall, there's summer. And the season throughout the year ebbs and flows. It has its highs and its lows. Fire season comes up, it peaks. We're all busy, focus on fire suppression. And then it'll die down and slow down. And then we can focus on fuels planning."
"And we already know now what we're going to treat with prescribed fire a year and a half out from now, two years out from now."
Housler says,
"Once we identify a block and we identify those by the process and the areas we can work in, then we'll look at using existing roads, trails, ridgelines, terrain features, and then that's going to be your block. So that's part of the scouting process."
"If we're going to use that road as a control feature, we've gotta adjust the impact and the intensity of the fire next to that. Thinning along the road, prepping, removing ladder fuels, thinning out the fuels so you don't have as intense a fire right next to the control line. Because that intense fire, number one, impacts the firefighters on the line, and number two, can cause spotting and impact your non-target side of the fire, the side you don't want to burn. And then if it's not a road we're prepping, we may use an existing terrain feature, a ridge line or a canyon bottom—we have to do the same thing there."
Control is key in keeping firefighters safe in both wildfire suppression and prescription burns. Housler says,
"We have to identify that's going to be our control feature. Adjust the fuels in that area so we can hold it successfully, whether that's removing fuels, adding lines, putting in a mechanical line with dozers, or opening old existing logging roads to use those as a holding feature.
If you have a slope that's all timbered and you want to put a control line in the middle of it, you can do that, but you'll have to remove a lot of fuels and bring in equipment to put a line there, so it's nice to use existing features.
We may be prepping it months or years in advance. Right before the burn, we'll have to go in and finish that, which may be weeding along to mitigate the grass or snagging. Because snags (standing dead trees) can catch on fire, and then you've got an aerial firebrand that's sending embers across your line. Not to mention, the snag can burn and fall. Even a non-burning snag can fall on a firefighter. We have a lot of injuries and fatalities in our line of work from trees hitting employees, so we identify those near the control lines and mitigate those by either isolating them or cutting them down, or removing them with mechanical if they're too dangerous to cut and go and push them over with a dozer."
Through the Wildland Urban Interface and other funds, our forest has several ongoing projects. Finch says,
"The Lincoln National Forest was awarded $2.2 million to team up with the National Forest Foundation, which has a variety of projects that will be funded with that money. One of those projects is the heritage survey portion of the Cloudcroft WUI Project."
"There's also additional mastication and surveys taking place at 16 Springs, and then we have a new project coming online within the next six months, and that will be habitat and timber improvement out near the community of Weed, New Mexico. And so there's a variety of projects on the house's fire fuel side. That's all ecosystem benefit, your wildfire reduction."
"The last thing I want to hit on is that not all wildfire is bad. Wildfire during certain parts of the time is bad because it's too intense, but wildfire is not a bad thing if that's used at the right time of the year. We can allow it to take its course on the landscape, if we make the right planning and the right decisions to allow that to happen. We can do that and be very successful."
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High-Pressure Decision-Making
Finch is no stranger to responding to large incidents and managing large groups, as he volunteers as the Deputy Incident Commander on a National Incident Management Team.
Finch says, "A lot of strategic planning and thinking goes into these projects. It's not just go out and burn. We have to evaluate a number of factors constantly. And that's why it takes so long to plan these out because, you know, we just don't make decisions in a vacuum."
When asked about the Hermit's Peak and Calf Canyon Fires, prescribed burns that leaped out of control to become the most destructive fire in New Mexico's history, Finch says,
"Just because a prescribed fire is considered lost doesn't mean it's the resemblance of Calf Canyon/Hermit's Peak from a few years ago. It could be something as simple as: it happened to burn on private property a couple acres. It gets deemed a wildfire, because it opens up funding mechanisms to bring in additional resources."
"But the key to preventing those prescribed fire losses is that in-depth strategic planning and conversation and just making sure that we are eliminating our biases when we plan those. What is the risk? What's realistic? And then just start to nail down all those elements that could lead to potential escape."
"It hasn't made us gun-shy. What it does is ensure that we remain within the policy that's given to us. Because the policy is really good, we can implement the right plan. But when individuals deviate from the policy or deviate from the plan, then that can get you into some trouble."
"For us, we know that it's still important to treat the landscape with prescribed fire. It's good for the ecosystem and it needs it. But we just have to be very thorough about it and do it right and know when to say yes and then know when to say no. But we have our targets for Lincoln National Forest."
Housler says, "Yeah. It's your own bias, but to just throw in another term is pressure. Caleb talked about targets, and that's the expectation from the regional office and the Washington office, but we need to be careful at our level. That's maybe not a bias, but it's something you need to be conscious of."
Finch: "The reason that's brought up is the important message for the public and the readers, to let them know that we, as fire managers, take this very seriously. And so if one person makes decisions for prescribed fire, then you're within the realm of your slides, your experience in decision-making."
"But if we make these decisions in the realm of 30 years and 30 years and 30 years of experience [gestures at Housler, Barone, and himself], then you're making those decisions based on these slides and those slides. And that rules out that bias."
"We want to ensure that we build quality control within our processes. And that's that important message to get across. Regarding the target message, there's always going to be some level of expectation. It's not pressure like, oh, we have to get this done. But there's an expectation that we're going to achieve. It's a goal. But it's not this pressure that we have to go out and take undue risk."
Life, Property, Resources: How to Prepare
When asked about if and when a fire reaches Cloudcroft, Finch says,
"There's a lot that's going to take place at that time. The Village is focused on the structures; engines are going to be focused on the evacuation of the Village of Cloudcroft."
Finch says, “Their primary mission is to evacuate the community because in a fire, there are three priorities. There's life, property, resources. Life being your number one priority, get everybody out as much as you can.”
"But on the perimeter where the Forest Service is going to come in, our primary focus is going to be on that perimeter, but also supporting the efforts of limiting the impacts of that fire to property. There's just a number of elements that got to come into play."
"Like, where the fire is moving, when it starts, where it starts, the location it starts, how long it's going to take to get to the Village. If it starts in Karr Canyon down there near the mouth, if it's late June—just like if you were to plug the conditions that the South Fork and Salt Fire started—and you have a fire down in Karr Canyon, you're looking at about three, four hours before it gets to the edge of the Village of Cloudcroft. You know, it's not minutes. It takes time to build and time to move. And obviously, if it starts in (Highway) 82, where some of the homes are, you will have a lot shorter time frame."
When a fire does impact a community, controlling the blaze is complicated.
Housler explains: “You look at the village of Ruidoso, when the South Fork rolled out of there, that initial two days of that fire coming out of the wilderness into that community, they're picking up the pieces and going road to road, literally road to road in subdivisions and in town to pick up those pieces and tie those pieces together. And people that were on that side of the road, Unfortunately, you know, they couldn't pick the pieces up fast enough, so they used that road. I mean, we've got an engine captain that the fire burned within a block of his house.”
Finch says, “But there’s a lot of homes that will make it within the interior.”
Housler: “And that may just be based on a wider road or fuels treatment or private property doing a little bit of their part.”
Finch: “Or it could be the internal mechanisms taking place within the atmosphere of the fire itself and the wind. Because as that fire moves through and you have different geographic features and canyons and ditches and ridges and this and that, like it all works together underneath that column of smoke. And then it comes around the house and there's houses that have no treatment around them that survive. But then there are houses that the landscape looks good, it's pretty, it's clean, it's treated, and they burn.”
Housler: “And materials and construction.”
Finch: “The other thing is: it's not that the firefighters are letting the fire burn. You can't get out in front of it, right? And no amount of retardant is going to stop the fire. One load of retardant is roughly $10,000. And so you've got to be strategic with where you can be most effective with that retardant. And just dropping in front of it is... It's also putting... the risk of the pilot's lives in danger. I mean, we've had two pilots just this year that have, that crashed and died and didn't make it, so you got to think about them as well.”
Housler: “This is our district, and we are familiar with it. I mean, I'm the fifth generation of my family here. That aside, I mean, I've been here my entire career, so you've got that institutional knowledge in all of us. All of us have been on this district for 25 years plus.”
When discussing what homeowners can do for their properties, Finch says,
"When you have a fire that's beginning to run through your community, firefighters are going to triage the community. And they're going to look at homes, and they're going to look at homes and find a home that doesn't have wood stacked against their house, and their grass is trimmed, and the ladder fuels, those limbs are raised up. That house is protectable from a wildfire under certain conditions."
"But that same firefighter will look at a house with those items that I just listed, not addressed, and they're going to drive right by that house because it's not protectable."
When discussing recent Timberon fires, Finch says, "In that time, it only burned... 250 acres, but it burned about 200 homes. We respond to fires out there every year. We had the Oakmont out there this year. I think they lost some outbuildings and a mobile home out of it, but yeah, when you get those kinds of communities that are right in a forested area, it gets very difficult. Like, just a little bit of spread has taken off homes, and the next thing you know, the homes become somewhat of a fuel themselves."
Local District with National Resources and the “Smokey Bear” Message
The Sacramento District is home to the Sacramento Hotshots. You can catch our interviews with their superintendent Danny Chavez and his crew here.
Barone explains how and when hotshot crews are called for duty. He says,
"Five, six hotshot crews—you can load 150 people quickly to go attack a large fire. There are initial attack resources and extended attack resources. If they're here, we use them. If they're not here, we order one. When Wendell was talking about responding to this Moser fire, the Sacramento hot shots were on the Santa Fe National Forest."
"We had Silver City here by 10 o'clock. Smoky Bear was here by 6:00 or 7:00. Smoky Bear hotshots, Aravaipa, came there off the Coronado National Forest in Arizona. So we had three hotshot crews here before midnight."
Housler says, "You may wake up in your bed in the morning and by that evening you're three states away riding in a helicopter to go to a fire. That's the hotshot."
Finch says, "Vice versa too, because when we're really dry, in our prime time fire season, Wendell orders engine crews from outside of the area. This year we hosted engine crews from Oregon."
Housler says,
"Tatonka hotshots, for instance, are out of South Dakota. So we're in our fire season, you know, May, June, April, May, June. South Dakota's still coming out of winter. But their crews are already available, so they'll bring those crews in from the northwest, then they'll just put them here and we host them."
"And then we use them if we have a fire, but they're also here. So, instead of having to travel all the way from South Dakota to respond to a fire, they'll bring hotshot crews into the whole region and they'll just sprinkle them around. If you get a start anywhere within 300 miles of you, you can launch and send them."
Housler stressed the importance of human impacts in the forest—and being fire aware. He says,
"Human-caused fires are a very big concern because we've got all this infrastructure, not only the forest. Structure fire, whether that's somebody dumping their charcoal from their grill outside the house, or visitors to the forest, or new residents."
"Anything like that could be a potential ignition source, but also the infrastructure to support the private property, power lines, gas lines, roads that are potential ignition sources from vehicle fires, any of that stuff that has now been pushed into the forest that is not historic ignition source now we have to deal with."
"And then you do have the—I call them a probably politically incorrect term—but stupid human tricks. We all do dumb things, but somebody out welding on a windy, dry day, and doesn't think about if it lights the grass. And now it's going to run across their property and run up the hill. Those are all the ignition sources that we're worried about."
Barone says, "I kind of look at it like: we all decide to live in this National Forest. We all accept some risk of living up here. I'll accept that risk instead of living in Alamogordo myself, and you know we're all fire people so our places are pretty dialed. We know what to do, and I've trained with my family and talked about it, and the best thing we can do for the public is to evacuate. Follow those emergency procedures. Know that there are a lot of people doing everything they can, but safety is the number one priority."
When asked what treatments he gives his own home and property, Finch says,
"It's an annual requirement upon themselves to reduce and take action to create defensible space, and reduce that fuel loading. Fuel loading is the amount of grass that grows back every year."
"Homeowners need to look at their gutters. If there's pine needles and debris and duff or pine litter sitting in their gutters or sitting on their rooftop, they want to pull that off. If there's a wood pile sitting right next to their house, they want to pull that away. That's what I do. Every year I have gravel around my entire house. I trim the grass back, I rake up the pine needles, and I actually burn my yard every year. I have a few acres and I actually prescribe fire every year. But I have to do that every year."
"I mean, my property is really open. I model my property after what I know the ecosystem needs. But a lot of people like trees, and that's fine if they like the trees, right? That's cool. But if they can limb up the trees."
"Everybody's yard should be manicured. And what they do to their house might save their neighbor's house."
Finch delivers his “Smokey Bear” message, calling for partnership, education, and engagement, saying,
"We're only a part of the solution. The solution to reducing the negative impacts of a wildland fire is that we're part of the solution, the community is part of the solution, the public is part of the solution, the state, local government agencies are part of the solution, but none of them are the solution. It's a multi-agency, multi-led public effort that we all contribute to."
"I think the Village of Cloudcroft has done a great job. Eric Wuersching and all the individuals that have been with the Village, they've done a great job of getting the message out, sharing the message."
"But what needs to happen more is the community, the public, needs to engage in those events that are sponsored by the Village of Cloudcroft, sponsored by the Forest Service, sponsored by the State Forestry, and listen, and take heed to what's being shared."
"A lot of effort goes into these fire prevention weeks and community meetings. We had a community meeting back in the spring to talk about the Cloudcroft WUI project. And we went business to business, handed out flyers. We did the social media. We did the press releases. We shared the message. And we had maybe 10 people show up."
"My little Smokey Bear message is: we're always looking for summer help, and we're always looking for employees. It's a great job. You get paid to travel and go see cool country. You get paid to understand. You get paid to work as a team and learn about leadership and communication and how all those skill sets can make you very functional in life; in whatever job or career path. I've been all over the Western U.S., and I have seen so much cool stuff that most people won't get to see in their lifetime."






For Part One of this interview series, visit here. For more on Cloudcroft’s Fire Risk, visit our Cloudcroft Reader Forum recap.
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