Residents continue to object to Forest Service plans to burn just outside of Santa Fe 

Prescribed Burning Meeting with the Forest Service
Santa Fe National Forest Headquarters – Sep 25, 2024
Transcript

US Forest Service:

[Intro]

We want to be respectful of all of your time. We want to listen to all of you. We want to address any concerns. So we encourage everyone to be respectful in the dialogue. We want to hear from all of you.

US Forest Service:

So with that, I will hand it over to our district ranger.

US Forest Service:

Good evening everybody, my name is Sandra Jacquez. I’m the district ranger on the Española Ranger District, and it’s really good to see some familiar faces, and some new faces, and I really appreciate that all of you were willing to come out and have conversations with us, have some discussions, express your concerns. I think we’ve taken some of those in, for those that were meeting with us last year, some of those into consideration, we’ve taken some steps to resolve some of those concerns from last year as we move forward into this season.

US Forest Service:

So I just again really appreciate it. We value your time and this is a big commitment of ours to reach out to the communities, to work with the communities, to work with our public and continue those conversations before, during, after and just throughout everything that we do.

US Forest Service:

Good evening everybody. I’m Brandon Glenn. I’m the FMO [Fire Management Officer] of the Espanola Ranger District. I’ll be the one that will more than likely be the burn boss on these fires that we’re going to be looking to implement here.

US Forest Service:

And this is the first one, the North Aztec, as many of you know, 647 acres. Mostly ponderosa pine, some juniper, a little bit of mixed conifer in there, some limber pine in places. There’s our elevation from 8,000 to 9,400 feet.

US Forest Service:

Key for this one, and it’s more on that map there. And Claudia will have another map that kind of shows it too. It’s the last first entry broadcast burn in the watershed proper that we’ve done. And that map on the far left has all the other units.

US Forest Service:

And the one on the northwest there, that pink one, is the North Aztec burn. So that’s kind of the final piece in the watershed that hasn’t been broadcast burned.

Attendee A:

What is “last first entry?” It’s kind of contradictory. Could you explain that a little bit?

US Forest Service:

“Well “first entry” means that it hasn’t been broadcast yet.

Attendee A:

Oh okay.

US Forest Service:

So a broadcast burn is a fire that burns across the landscape freely. There’s no snow or any sort of impediment to it, and this is the last one of those units in the watershed that has not been [broadcast burned].

Attendee A:

I see. Not last in time, but last of those units.

US Forest Service:

And it has had some pile burning on it and the implementation window is any time, really after the Balloon Fiesta. The parameters aren’t there right now. It’s a little wet. But if the conditions were right, you know anytime before the snow is where the season is for that.

US Forest Service:

And there’s this is our limiting factors here as I mentioned the balloon fiesta October 5th through the 12th, so we won’t burn anytime during the balloon fiesta on in the watershed/ We have to have a wind that doesn’t have an east component in it, so anything that could potentially bring the smoke into the Santa Fe proper area. So we look for anything that’s southwest, west, northwest winds when we’re doing those watershed burns. Smoke dispersal: has to be good or better at least 60,000 knot feet I believe is the good category. I think it’s 60,000 knot feet. Sustained eye level: eight miles an hour or greater for two minutes.

US Forest Service:

So eye level winds: eight miles an hour. If it’s above that, then we won’t burn; we’ll stop burning and try and cut it off somewhere. That’s why we look at the predicted conditions so that we’re not getting close to that. And then there’s a temperature range: anything greater than 80 degrees, we won’t be able to burn, and if the relative humidity is less than 12%, we won’t be able to burn. And then there’s our one, ten thousand and hundred thousand hour fuel parameters: four percent, five percent, six percent, seven percent for the thousands. Thousands is the one we really look at hard as far as to give us where the unit sits as far as fuel moistures go. Right now, the last fuel moistures we have: the thousands were at eighteen percent and thirty-six percent. So they’re much higher than the minimum parameters.

Attendee A:

So could you explain what one hour is – is that percent of soil moisture or what?

US Forest Service:

Well, perhaps we should get through this first and then we’ll take the questions, because I think we’ll get derailed if we start doing this again. So let’s get through this and maybe Rian can give you a good definition of thousand hours here in a minute, but the basic is a thousand hours is seven inches, roughly, and then as you go down to hundreds and tens, those fuels get smaller in diameter.

US Forest Service:

It’s just the size of the fuel. I don’t want to get into the big scientific description of them.

US Forest Service:

It’s the size of the fuels, and roughly how long it takes them to try out.

US Forest Service:

But anyhow, so moving on, this is that same map that I pointed out over here, a little bit bigger. You can see all of these units have had a broadcast in them. So this is the last one that hasn’t seen broadcast burning – it’s North Aztec.

US Forest Service:

The last one we did was South Aztec in 2021. Some of these have actually had multiple entries in them. We started, you know, up here, and then moved into the wind. And we have to have some sort of west component.

US Forest Service:

So we’ve been moving that direction with all the burns over the last 20 years. As you can see, the pile started in 2003, and then we started doing the broadcast burning in 2005.

Attendee B:

And where’s Hyde Park Road on that map?

US Forest Service:

Hyde Park Road isn’t on this map. Well, there it is, right there. It’s off to the north.

Attendee C:

So we’re directly west of the burn. Right in the path of the fire.

US Forest Service:

Well the path of the fire is actually within the unit.

Attendee C:

I’m not concerned about your nomenclature. I’m concerned about losing my house.

US Forest Service:

You know, sir, we’ll address any concerns after.

Attendee C:

I’m saying what the language is here, sorry.

US Forest Service:

We want to get through the maps just so other residents can see how their areas are affected.

Attendee D:

How far is the fire from the houses?

US Forest Service:

Which house? The closest house — Jai can probably give you a better answer — a quarter mile.

US Forest Service:

So this is the other unit that we’re gonna look to do, this North Ridge, this green. This is a boundary pile unit — cut and pile –that’s gonna be in the winter time. These are the units that we did last winter, this little hatched area here, and we did all of these units last winter in the snow. That’s snow pile burning.

Attendee E:

So you mean the most recent winter? The last winter would be ’23-’24.

US Forest Service:

Correct.

Attendee A:

So this new unit on the right in Hyde Park, is that pile, or is that broadcast?

US Forest Service:

That’s the one we’re going to do, that’s piles. The broadcast one on the map is North Aztec, and then now we’re moving on to where the piles are.

US Forest Service:

Here’s the map that shows North Aztec. There are the piles that we did last winter. And then there’s the North Ridge cut/pile.

Attendee F:

So you’re going to do a broad burn of all the North Aztec.

US Forest Service:

Yes. 647 acres.

Attendee C:

Could you tell us what the average gradient is on the burned area, please? Is that okay for me to ask that question?

US Forest Service:

What was the question? The slope?

US Forest Service:

The average is about 30 to 40 percent slope.

US Forest Service:

And then this here is our Tesuque units. They’re cutting and piling this now [points to red line on map]. But the ones that we’re going to do this winter are these green, just the boundaries. This is not cut [points to solid green area on map]. But these [dark green] boundaries here are cut and piled.

US Forest Service:

And that’s the one that’s 67 acres, I believe, Rian?

US Forest Service:

69 acres.

US Forest Service:

69 acres.

Attendee A:

So just to orient — the Hyde Park Road’s on the right, there?

US Forest Service:

Yeah. And then this is Forest Road 102 coming down into Pacheco Canyon. There’s the units just in the north here, in Pacheco Canyon, those are the units that we did in the last few years. We did Unit 4 and the east unit last winter, along with the stuff we did in Hyde Park.

Attendee A:

So the green, again, is that pile or —

US Forest Service:

The dark green just on the boundary there, the light green has not been thinned yet.

Attendee G:

And is that a road? (pointing to dark green line)

US Forest Service:

No, that’s a ridge line. This is a ridge line here.

Attendee H:

Could you identify a couple of other roads beyond the Hyde Park Road that would be —

US Forest Service:

The only other road is this Forest Road 102. It follows right here, and then you can see it kind of shoots off into Pacheco Canyon. It picks up there on that map. That’s the only other road that’s going to be identified on there.

US Forest Service:

Tesuque Creek follows the pink there. That’s a future unit. No cutting has been done in there yet.

US Forest Service:

And then this is just some shots of our drought, one of the things we have to look at in our burn plans. And I think Rian will touch a lot on this in his portion and where we sit with the drought.

US Forest Service:

So go back to that one. This is just this year compared to last year at this time. So there’s last year where we were at. These darker red and darker orange is a little bit more severe drought, extreme to severe.

US Forest Service:

And this is where we’re at now. Moderate to abnormally dry, depending on where you are in our area, in our district. And then the next one just kind of shows the whole West. You can see where we were last year, the one on the right.

US Forest Service:

New Mexico, part of Arizona, this is where most of the drought was this year. We’re getting fairly clear of the drought. And then some of this stuff has moved more into higher drought this year. And then that’s a similar picture of what we have now compared to 2022.

US Forest Service:

And then the next one shows where we were on the whole West. So most of northern New Mexico has moved out of the severe to extreme. And it’s kind of moved into other areas. You can see Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, are a little bit harder hit now with drought.

US Forest Service:

And then I believe that’s the last one for the drought. And then I think Rian’s going to talk a little bit about these next slides as far as what we’ve got going on a little different in our prescribed fire program, compared to pre- Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon.

US Forest Service:

Hi, I’m Rian Ream. I’m the Fuels Program Manager here on the Santa Fe National Forest. I’ve been in fire since 2000. I’ve been with the Forest Service since 2003. I spent 10 years on a hotshot crew.

US Forest Service:

Started here on the Santa Fe National Forest in 2011. And then moved into Fuels in 2019. I did work on Espanola Ranger District with Brandon. I was on a lot of these prescribed burns that we did here in the Santa Fe Watershed over the past.

US Forest Service:

So just to clarify, you know, all of those units that you see on that map there have seen at least one entry of prescribed burning except for North Aztec. Almost all of those areas that you see in there were thinned.

US Forest Service:

And then we thinned the canopy, did a pile burn, and then did a broadcast burn afterwards, at least one entry. So a little bit, you know, back up — why are we doing this? So this area historically burned every 10 to 15 years in the watershed. And we know that. We have some of the best tree ring studies in the country.

Attendee D:

But that’s very controversial.

US Forest Service:

Let’s wait. We want to hear all the perspectives and we can share some of those at the end.

Attendee D:

It’s very controversial.

US Forest Service:

And we can bring that up at the end.

US Forest Service:

Well regardless, if it’s 10 to 15 years of fire return or 50, it hasn’t seen fire in over 150 years.

Attendee I:

Old growth — that’s how you get it.

US Forest Service:

Well, what’s happening is, is you’re getting a really thick forest in there. The trees are growing a lot thicker.

Attendee J:

It looks pretty. Why burn it?

US Forest Service:

Because in a in a wildfire scenario, you’re going to lose all the trees.

US Forest Service:

We saw it with Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon. We saw it with Cerro Grande.

Attendee C:

By the way, I’d like to ask you, sir.

US Forest Service:

Let’s wait. Let’s wait, sir.

Attendee C:

We’re here for a reason.

US Forest Service:

Sir, I completely understand your concern.

Attendee C:

We lived next to that forest for almost 50 years. We built our home. We staked our lives there. And it’s our choice to be in that beautiful forest. We don’t want you to burn it.

US Forest Service:

I want to say one thing. I don’t want it all burned up, and I don’t want the debris flows to wipe out your house afterwards. I’ve been fighting fires for almost 25 years. We’re not just prescribed burners, we’re also on fire all summer long.

US Forest Service:

We don’t want to lose these forests either.

Attendee C:

You don’t save a forest by killing it.

US Forest Service:

We’re not killing it.

Attendee C:

You are killing it when you burn it, sir. I’m sorry.

Attendee C:

Please quit asking us to not talk. We’ll get there. We’re gonna be polite here, but we’re gonna make sure you understand how we feel about this.

US Forest Service:

Like I said, we’ve done prescribed burning in all of the Santa Fe watershed. I have a post debris flow study here that was done by Ellis Margolis and Alan Hook over here that has modeled the fire behavior in there.

US Forest Service:

And the post debris flow modeling that we’ve got is significantly less in the areas that we’ve thinned and burned. So the forest is still intact up there. I go up into the Santa Fe watershed all the time.

US Forest Service:

There’s old growth trees up there. The idea that the fire is just going to be burning free is a misconception. We’re gonna start by burning at the very top of the hill and bringing fire slowly down the hill, so we’re keeping the fire on the ground.

US Forest Service:

We start uphill, and we start downwind, and we bring the fire down the hill, and we’re reducing the fuel. So what this does is it releases a lot of the seed bank that’s in the forest floor, so the grasses come in and stabilize the soil.

US Forest Service:

And this is a perfect study of that that I can share with anybody that wants to see it, done by reputable scientists. I really do care about this forest. I’m not trying to kill it.

US Forest Service:

I spend time there myself. My kids recreate, I’ve lived here since 2011. So that flusters me, we’re trying to do something here that benefits the forest.

Attendee D:

We don’t agree.

US Forest Service:

And we get lightning strikes in these units that we treat all the time.

US Forest Service:

And these units give us a better chance of containing that fire during the summertime when it’s hot and it can destroy the whole canopy. And then cause the downstream debris flow.

US Forest Service:

So I’m gonna get to what we’re doing differently since Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon. Because Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon was a tragedy. And I’m really passionate about that not happening again. That’s something that should have never happened. And I’m gonna be the first to admit that. So what we’re doing differently, we’re doing our burn plans.

US Forest Service:

It starts in the planning phase when we’re doing our burn plans. We’re doing our burn plans for site specific, unit specific. We have a burn plan for North Aztec Springs. And we’re doing more extensive modeling for that unit.

US Forest Service:

That lets us narrow in on what our prescription is to keep that fire low to moderate intensity, so we’re not getting any debris flows. And the city of Santa Fe studies the water. Most of the water for the City is in the watershed.

US Forest Service:

And after our prescribed burns, the debris flow has been negligible after our prescribed burns. But getting back — our burn plans and more site specifics. We’re doing modeling for those that narrows in on our prescription.

US Forest Service:

And then how many resources we need if a fire gets out. We’re modeling for the fuels outside the unit as well. Getting to the agency ignition authorization, we have more levels of accountability. So we’re briefing every season before we burn.

US Forest Service:

We’re briefing our congressionals. We’re briefing our forest supervisor. And then every day our agency administrator, which is usually the ranger, Sandy, we’re sitting down with her and we’re going through a checklist and making sure that we’ve thought of everything.

US Forest Service:

And that’s done every day, where before it was done for a period of time. And now we’re doing it every day so it’s more specific. And we’re taking into consideration the drought. What do you do differently if you’re in drought?

US Forest Service:

We increase our organizations, we burn under a higher fuel moisture. So, and then every day a go-no-go checklist is done. The IFTDSS [IFTDSS-MTT is the Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System–Minimum Time Travel is the modeling. And we put that into each of our burn plan now, where we weren’t doing IFTDSS before — that came out of the Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon review.

US Forest Service:

The next thing we’re doing is we’re getting based upon how the modeling is showing how fast the fire is going to move. We adjust how fast our resources, our people can dig line to contain that fire.

US Forest Service:

And then we’re going another step in almost all of our burns, doubling the resources that we put on that burn just to be safe. The next thing —

Attendee D:

Do you have tankers available in case it gets out of control?

US Forest Service:

There are tankers available in the region.

Attendee D:

Where?

US Forest Service:

They’re spread out along the region.

Attendee D:

Are they in Albuquerque?

Attendee J:

This is counterproductive for the rest of us, if you can arrange a meeting, if you have someone who has specific questions.

US Forest Service:

So the next thing we’re taking in is the the holding plan is different in our new burn plans, and that is what happens after we do the ignitions. So after we do the ignitions we’re doing what’s called mopping up and that’s where on wildfire, that’s what we do after we get our fire lines in — we mop up the edge and make it secure, so eventually we can walk away from it. And that’s what we’re doing on our prescribed burns now is we’re keeping the whole organization until we have secured anything that has potential to throw embers outside of the unit before we go into the patrol phase. And then, once we go into the patrol phase, it’s patrolled until we’re not seeing any smoke anymore, any smoke interior in the unit, and then we’re using infrared — both handheld devices to find the heat along the edge, and then before we call our fires out, we’re flying it with infrared, either planes or drones that can pinpoint the smallest amount of heat. We use these on wildfires like I said you know we’re wildfire fighters as well, we’re not just prescribed fire people, and we use these on wildfires before we call them out as well. We’re using these now on prescribed burns, and then if we find any heat sources, the crews go in there and extinguish those heat sources, and we’ll keep flying it until we no longer find any heat sources on it before we call it out.

US Forest Service:

So in a nutshell. And then we’re doing a lot more of the communication and outreach. Before all of our burns we’re doing public meetings. You know I’ve been going out, talking to land grants and different communities all summer long, so we’re doing a lot more outreach and communication and involvement.

US Forest Service:

Operationally we’re a minimum organization. We’re upping it. Contingency resources: before, they were within a couple hours. We’re gonna have our contingency resources on site, so they can respond in 30 minutes to any spot fires that we may get. Patrol: before we go into the patrol phase, we’ve already done the mop up, just like we do on a wildfire. So the whole perimeter is secure before we go into that patrol phase, and then using the thermal imagery before we call fire out.

US Forest Service:

And then the critical weather step up plan is if we’re getting an NFDRS [National Fire Danger Rating System] rating and we’re seeing ignition sources of basically smoke on the unit. If we’re getting a critical weather advisory or an NFDRS rating of High or Extreme, we’re gonna up the organization and bring in a bunch of people to our minimum organization and have them ready for anything that may happen.

US Forest Service:

So that’s that’s what we’re doing differently. And you know it isn’t for sure — like last year we canceled the burn. There’s a lot that has to fall in place before we do one of these burns. One, we have to have the weather parameters, we have to have the right humidity, the right temperature, the right wind, the right smoke ventilation. Like Brandon said, we’re not gonna burn under an east wind, and we have to have good ventilation — that’s the vertical lift in the atmosphere that lifts the smoke up and disperses it.

US Forest Service:

So yeah, is that all the slides we have? Yeah, so with that, now we’ll open it up for comments and questions.

Attendee C:

Thank you. It’s a good description of what you want to get across. Thank you.

US Forest Service:

We want to hear everybody’s perspective. We know a lot of you have concerns. So if you can just raise your hand and we can try to address everyone. All right, we’ll start with Sam here.

Attendee A:

So, this modeling exercise, does that include site-specific data?

US Forest Service:

The data that it uses is satellite imagery that’s altered. It’s called LandFire, and it uses the satellite imagery to determine the fuel models that are on the ground. And then we take that and we go out and we verify those fuel models on the ground to make sure they’re correct before we start entering the weather variables.

Attendee A:

When you say fuel models, you mean dead and down material, canopy closure, what, what is that?

US Forest Service:

There’s 40 different fuel models as far as what kind of fuel. The primary fuel models up in the watershed are ponderosa pine, grass, and mixed conifer.

US Forest Service:

And those fuel models are pixelated on the landscape, and so when the model runs it takes into account the drainages, where the wind is going to funnel based upon the wind direction that you’re putting into the model, and then the fuel moistures that you put in there as well.

Attendee A:

So this satellite imagery is current? Like much satellite imagery is several weeks old or even years old.

US Forest Service:

They update it every year.

Attendee A:

Every year. So it could be a year old.

US Forest Service:

It could be a year old, yeah.

Attendee A:

That’s a problem.

US Forest Service:

Well, the fuel, I mean trees grow at a rate that is, the fuel models, I mean, we go out there and verify. The other thing that we do is before our burns that, like a wildfire, we’re putting in the containment line.

US Forest Service:

And what I mean by line is, is you have a line on the edge of the fire that’s dug down to mineral soil, so the fire can’t progress any farther. And then you’re removing the fuels away from that line, called prepping the line.

US Forest Service:

And that’s already done on a prescribed burn. It’s a controlled burn. So the containment features are already there. Most of the units around North Aztec, on the south have already been burned, and on the north it’s all been thinned and pile burned.

US Forest Service:

So the areas around the North Aztec have already been treated in one way or another.

Attendee A:

Can I just ask real quick —

US Forest Service:

One more question.

Attendee A:

The details on the Tesuque unit, maybe we could put the slide back up again, so you know you have the ridge top pile burns and then you have that green area that’s adjacent to the ridge, so what is going to occur in there?

US Forest Service:

This skinny line right here?

Attendee A:

Yeah those are piles.

US Forest Service:

Yeah, so this dark green that’s in the middle here: there’s a hand line that goes down this ridge, and this is a road right here, and then there’s a hand line that goes along this ridge —

Attendee A:

Yes, but what about the other green, what happens in there? There’s no piles in there.

US Forest Service:

There’s no piles in there. This [lighter green area] is proposed thinning treatment.

Attendee A:

Oh thinning treatment.

US Forest Service:

That hasn’t occurred yet.

Attendee A:

And that’s going to happen this spring, or next year?

US Forest Service:

It will happen next fall.

Attendee A:

Next fall.

US Forest Service:

This has already occurred here [dark green line that has been cut and piled]. The idea with this is that these are containment features. They’re ridge lines. So if you get a lightning strike in here, and this fire is burning up the hill here, you have a containment feature here that firefighters can use.

US Forest Service:

And so what’s that?

Attendee A:

And so what’s that area in the middle — unit 24 that’s not in color, between the purple and the green, right in the middle there.

US Forest Service:

This is going to be an eventual prescribed burden unit.

Attendee A:

So there’s nothing going to happen next year.

US Forest Service:

Not in the near future. So we’re going to burn these piles this winter when there’s snow on the ground, just on the ridgeline, and then next fall this lighter green area will be thinned, and then the following winter which well, it’ll probably be ’26-27 we’ll be burning those piles, and then in the future ’28-29 — I don’t know when exactly — there’ll be a prescribed burn in that unit.

Attendee A:

Okay thank you.

US Forest Service:

Alright, Jonathan?

Attendee K:

Yeah, Rian, could you speak a little about the efficacy of the handheld sensors and the aerial sensors? You said they can pinpoint the smallest amount of heat, but I’ve heard different things and I’m confused about when they stop working, what they can’t reach.

US Forest Service:

So for an example, a couple of years back, I was on a fire in Northern California. They have bad inversions. What that means is soaked in with smoke all day long. And then in the afternoon, when that inversion and lift, the sea breezes would come in, and the fire behavior would pick up.

US Forest Service:

And we get spot fires. We come in in the morning, and we don’t know where those spot fires are. There’s smoke everywhere. We fly the UAS. They give us latin longs. The crews would go in and put out those spot fires, pinpoint accuracy.

US Forest Service:

The same thing that we’re using on our prescribed burns.

Attendee K:

But I think people are thinking about whether these sensors can pinpoint something like what caused the Calf Canyon Fire smoldering under the ground or under the snow.

Attendee K:

That’s what a lot of people are very afraid of.

US Forest Service:

Well, we weren’t flying our prescribed burns, and now we’re flying our prescribed burns, so yeah, the Calf Canyon was a different story.

Attendee K:

But can aerial sensors pick up something like that underneath the snow?

US Forest Service:

Yes, we used it on all of our prescribed burns that we did this last winter.

Attendee K:

And do you expect they will consistently pick up that? It’s not going to miss heat?

US Forest Service:

It will, it will consistently, it’s not going to pick it up. If it’s underneath the snow, it’s not going to pick it up. But we wait until the snow is, is coming off of the unit and fly it to get, to make sure that our pile burns are completely out.

Attendee J:

I mean, obviously, there’s a depth issue. How deep, beyond a certain depth, it’s not going to pick it up. My common sense makes me very sure of that. There’s a limit. And similarly, when the altitude is of whatever is flying becomes bigger, then you also lose some of it.

Attendee J:

So there’s the combination of those two things combined with a mist or smoke or anything like that could easily make it be unreliable. I think it’s a really bad model for children, let’s say, to give the idea that a little device is going to solve this problem.

Attendee J:

When we know in Calf Canyon —

US Forest Service:

We’re also patrolling, and we’re also doing our mop-up after our burns. So it’s it’s another level. I mean we’re layering the levels of protection there. The mop-up after after the burn, the patrols, picking up the smokes and going in and putting out those stump holes or those logs that are creating the smoke, and then also using the handheld devices to find it, and then also flying it to further pinpoint those resources.

US Forest Service:

I don’t know if you want to speak to Pacheco too. We flew IR over it and did identify some heat sources.

US Forest Service:

Yeah, we did, in the Pacheco burn, we found, after we had been patrolling, and we’re pretty sure we flew it. We found heat sources, the guys went in, they mopped up those heat sources, we flew it again, got no heat sources, patrolled it some more, and then called it out.

US Forest Service:

So we did test, we have been testing that, we are getting heat sources with it, and they are in where they’re told to be.

Attendee L:

My name is

Attendee L: . I’m a resident of Santa Fe. I’ve been here for 10 years. First, let me thank you for having this kind of a presentation and willingness to meet with the public because I think it’s critical.

Attendee L:

Secondly, listening to your backgrounds and the way you’ve presented, it is really excellent to hear. It shows that you’re learning from some of the past mistakes. But I must say, when I moved here 10 years ago and learned about the fire up in Los Alamos that was caused by the Forest Service, I said, wow, they’ve got a long way to go before I feel comfortable with it.

Attendee L:

And then just before the fire, I called my congresswoman, who’s a friend of mine, and said, you know, I’m really concerned about the Forest Service wanting to continue to burn the forest, because I just think there’s a lot we still don’t know about that.

Attendee L:

And then, of course, unfortunately, we had that disaster both here and in the Ruidoso area, both caused by the Forest Service, as I understand it. And so I guess my point is this. I’m not yet ready to feel comfortable, personally, that we know enough, even though we might have the best people that exist here.

Attendee L:

I mean, your backgrounds are really stunning. The kind of people I’d like to see there, the way you’ve presented it, makes me feel a lot of comfort. But I still feel we’re not there yet. And I guess my real question is, I know it might be more expensive to thin and cut and put it into a truck and take it down the hill and sell it as mulch.

Attendee L:

But I think it’d be a lot cheaper than what we’ve been through. And I just wonder, why do we continue to go down this path when I feel like we’re a long way away?

US Forest Service:

So a couple things. It’s too steep to get equipment in there. We tear up the ground. The trees that we’re pulling out are small diameter trees. We’re just taking out enough that we can reintroduce fire and keep the fire on the ground.

US Forest Service:

We’re not taking out large quantities of trees, but there’s no roads. Most of this is an Inventoried Roadless Area that we’re talking about, and it’s too steep to get machinery in there. The ridge lines, we have used machinery because a lot of the ridge lines are not too steep, and we’ve used mulchers.

US Forest Service:

But thinning and piling only reduces so much of the fuel. We still have a lot of ground fuel. And you know, I may not make a believer of everybody, but I was on the Pacheco [Medio] Fire in 2020. It was a year we didn’t have any monsoons.

US Forest Service:

And so it was August. It was odd for us to have a big wildfire. The fire started in Medio Creek drainage. And it raced up to the ridge line. We had put in this fuel break here. This burn right here was done in 2019.

US Forest Service:

The Medio Fire hit this fuel break and fell onto the ground. It was a crown fire when it hit the ridge, hit the fuel break, and fell on the ground. But it created a bunch of spot fires in here that started to burn in Pacheco Canyon.

US Forest Service:

It had the potential to go all the way to the ski area, and it had the temperature, much like it was doing [?]. We brought fire off of the Pacheco Fire scar that happened in 2011. We brought fire down along the edge of the Pacheco RX in one evening.

US Forest Service:

The hotshot crew did that. They wouldn’t have been able to bring that fire down along this ridge line, had it not been for this prescribed burn. Because they knew that this fuel treatment here would hold the burn they were lighting, and it secured the fire for moving any farther up Pacheco Canyon.

US Forest Service:

We did that in an evening where if we wouldn’t have had that, it would have taken the crew a week and a half, two weeks to prep that ridge line. And then not have any assurance that it was gonna hold in the conditions that we had.

US Forest Service:

We didn’t have that kind of time. We had a day, and we did that burnout in an afternoon. And we did it because we had done that prescribed burn the year before. And I’ve got lots of stories like that of treatments that we’ve used on wildfires as containment features.

US Forest Service:

And that’s where we’re using treatment optimization models that Matt Hurteau has done that highlight where we’re gonna have the most efficacy with our treatments to locate where we’re gonna put these fuel breaks, where we’re gonna put these prescribed burn units.

US Forest Service:

And then a lot of experience is on the ground. Where is this gonna work? Where are we gonna be able to get a foothold if we have a wildfire? Where are we gonna put these fuel breaks? Where are we gonna put these prescribed burns?

Attendee M:

Alan.

Attendee N:

I’m Alan Hook. I’m City of Santa Fe Water Division, Program Manager representing the City. So what you may not know, [?] 10 years, the original National Environmental Policy Act put together for the Environmental Impact Statement for municipal watershed projects.

Attendee N:

In it, there was an option for traditional wood use, and they explored that, and as Riaan said, less than, I think it’s like 20% of slopes were accessible to do that, unless you introduce more roads in there.

Attendee N:

Furthermore, in neighborhoods in this area, right along here, Upper Canyon Road, and Cerro Gordo Road is here, all said, we don’t want wood trucks coming. It was a very strong statement, so that’s why wood extraction has not occurred.

Attendee C:

Use mules.

Attendee C:

No, that’s why, it’s a tourist draw, people would love to see that.

Attendee C:

[?] he lives again.

Attendee N:

I guess the community said, we don’t want to see that.

Attendee C:

They might not want to see a truck, but maybe the mule train would look nice to them.

Attendee N:

I don’t know how many mules they have.

Attendee C:

Thinking out of the box. Thinking out of the box.

US Forest Service:

Let us let her ask a question.

Attendee H: 0

What’s the planned duration of that North Aztec and what’s the distance from the perimeter of it to Los Cerros Colorados, and could you define broadcast burn for me?

US Forest Service:

Okay, so the burn, we’re going to be using a helicopter to do a lot of the igniting and that does two things. It lessens the amount of time to do the burn, and secondly it’s safer for our firefighters in this steep ground walking back and forth.

US Forest Service:

If we were to do this by hand it would probably take over a week to light it. It’s going to take two to four days to ignite the burn and then probably a couple more days of mop up. So that’s the duration.

US Forest Service:

I’m not sure, so the closest structures are down here. I’m not sure where Cerros Colorados is, to be honest.

US Forest Service:

So the closest structure, the closest one, is Jai’s place. It’s about a quarter mile to the west.

US Forest Service:

Two things. It’s downwind, and it’s downhill. It would take a heavy wind pushing downhill, and under the burn plan, we’re not allowed to burn under any forecasted east winds.

US Forest Service:

And all of this has containment line around it. A broadcast burn is where we’re introducing fire across the whole unit. And now we don’t just light at the bottom and let this run up the hill. That would be stupid.

US Forest Service:

We start at the top, and we light right along the hand line, so it has a foot to move. The next strip may be two feet from that, and that burns into the black that you just created, and you create what’s called a black line.

US Forest Service:

You have your hand line, and you light right along that, and then you bring fire down the hill, and you put in a black line, so there’s a black buffer there of material that’s already burned. And once that black line is nice and wide, a couple hundred feet, then we bring in the helicopter and it keeps bringing the fire down the hill slowly.

US Forest Service:

What that does is down the hill, and into the wind. So you start downwind, and uphill. Fire 99% of the time burns uphill and with the wind, except in California, where you get the Santa Ana’s and then it will burn downhill.

US Forest Service:

But, so, you know, we’re not just lighting at the bottom and letting it run up the hill and torch all the trees. We’re bringing it down the hill slowly.

Attendee F:

You bring in all those animals right to my house. I mean, every rat, every squirrel, every bear, everything is coming straight to my house.

Attendee K:

What do you do if the wind direction changes?

Attendee F:

It changes at night, fast. It blows really hard at night.

Attendee C:

And the wind is variable.

Attendee F:

Yeah, very variable.

Attendee C:

I can point to my house if you would allow me, would you please? So we can explain to you where we are feeling endangered because of this.

US Forest Service:

Sir, I want to listen too. I just want to make sure everybody else gets a chance.

Attendee C:

Actually I don’t need your permission. Let me show you something. I’m not going to take the sitting down. This is a threat to our existence. We live right there, OK? That’s Hyde Park Estates. There’s your burn. All right? We’re less than a quarter mile away.

Attendee C:

It’s a 40% slope. We look at the side of the mountain. It’s totally green. They get this thing going. There’s no way, even with the step down, that you’re —

US Forest Service:

You’ve got to worry about the wildfire that’s coming.

Attendee C:

You know what? I’ll take you up and show you my fire stations. I’ve got three of them on my property. That’s how worried I am about this. And I’m being proactive. I’m trying to be helpful. But here’s the problem.

Attendee C:

You come down in a black line, and then another black line. And what are we looking at? Before we’re done, we’re looking at a black mountain. Now, if this thing spreads either direction, north or south, that canyon runs north, south more or less, OK?

Attendee C:

You’re going to have tourists coming to town, looking at the cathedral, and seeing nothing but a charcoal forest up there. And they’re not going to come back. They’re going to go back to Texas and tell their friends, don’t go there.

Attendee C:

It’s not pretty. What is the meaning of this? What is the impetus for this? Where does this all start? You mentioned some national study, blah, blah, blah. We don’t care about that. We want our nature the way it is.

Attendee C:

And if we get a lightning strike, we will work with you. We’ll help you. We’ll do whatever we can. We’ll feed you guys. We’ll do whatever it takes. But don’t set the forest on fire to save it. It makes no sense when you have people living so close, so proximal to this.

Attendee C:

Other than, look what happened to California. Burn them out.

US Forest Service:

If you get a lightning strike in there after we burn it, we’re going to be able to go in there and put a line around and keep it 10 by 10 in the middle of June. If you get a lightning strike up there and it’s untreated, that thing’s going to race all the way up to the ski area.

Attendee C:

It will go uphill for sure.

US Forest Service:

And what you’re going to get, you’re going to have to worry about, because fire burns uphill, you’re going to have to worry about the debris flows that come down and wipe out the houses down the hill.

Attendee C:

I watch that wind. I watch the wind change.

Attendee O:

It changes very quickly.

Attendee C:

Every minute it changes.

US Forest Service:

We know that. We deal with the velocity as well.

Attendee F:

I have a question. I know the ground is so hard, how do you dig in that kind of soil, because I mean it is hard, I mean it’s like digging on rocks.

US Forest Service:

It’s hard. We dig a line. It’s two to three feet wide. We have tools.

US Forest Service:

They’re fire tools. And we put water bars in there to divert the flow.

Attendee F:

I just wondered, because I can barely dig in my own yard, and I just wondered how you did.

US Forest Service:

Santa Fe Hotshots did most of the prep work up there. I think they got like a thousand hours of overtime digging all summer long, so, they’re tough.

Attendee I:

You know, they [?] and all kinds of things, caterpillars that overwinter, and 90% of the songbirds, [?], baby birds, songbirds, 90%, eat[?] caterpillars. And so they’ll be wiped out. They’re all in the leaves and everything that you want to burn.

Attendee I:

And you burn the grass, and so there won’t be any food for the animals [?] in the snow? Let’s see, the pinyon jay is endangered now. I mean, you’re going to be cutting down the trees. And also, the trees are actually a big thing here.

Attendee I:

You know, people [?] with the birds. But, you know, they do use the nets and so on, and they’re a big thing for their tourism and so on. And so who gets the lumber when they, you know, cut that lumber?

Attendee I:

What lumber company? Or what, you know, a warehouse owner? Or who gets it?

US Forest Service:

We’re not pulling the lumber off.

Attendee I:

Not this time?

US Forest Service:

We’re not pulling any merchantable timber off.

Attendee I:

You’re still destroying things. So anyway, for wildlife, it’s just horrendous. They’re incinerated, you know, all kinds of wildlife. And wildlife is disappearing, as far as our insects are disappearing, you know, bees, [?].

Attendee I:

So you’re just incinerating the whole thing. And also this is, you know, it’s a world class place, Santa Fe, they come from all over the world. They don’t want to come and smell smoke and see [?], and they want to [?] see wildlife.

Attendee I:

So I guess that’s about it.

US Forest Service:

Well, what I’d say is that I’ve done hikes up in the watershed with several local scientists, and the the plant diversity is more than double in the areas that we burn.

Attendee I:

Since when? What time period? When did it start? When did you start taking records?

US Forest Service:

We started thinning and burning in the watershed in 2001, is that right Alan?

Attendee N:

Yeah, it was just after that.

Attendee I:

So like historically you don’t know what it was [?] fifteen hundred years ago?

US Forest Service:

We have tree reading studies that determine the density of the forest.

Attendee N:

So there was a previous Rocky Mountain Research Station where they did one. It’s like a research branch of the Forest Service. I think it was part of the 2001 EIS, but they were tracking insects, you know, tracking those.

Attendee N:

They did also track pinyon jay populations, which fluctuated a lot. And then I think they also did some mammals subsequent to that in 2015.

Attendee I:

That was fairly recent. I was talking about historically, like, 50, 100 years ago.

Attendee N:

No, because the Forest Service doesn’t have a lot of resources every week or every year to go out and track every animal or insect. But again, kind of to Rian’s, and again, this is my, I’m in there like every other week.

Attendee N:

There’s still plenty of deer. I’ve seen bobcats, mountain lions. We get bears up in there all the time. Turkey, prevalent in turkey, because we have fifth graders going on watershed trips up above up to Nichols, and above Nichols, halfway between [?] Nichols.

Attendee P:

So they’ve seen, we have wildlife cameras for them to see. So they see deer, bobcat.

Attendee I:

Historically, I’m talking about the whole thing. I’m talking about the United States. Everything is disappearing So I’m glad you know you’re seeing through things, but what you’re seeing now is not what it used to be 100 years ago.

US Forest Service:

I’m talking about comparing areas that haven’t been thinned and burned compared to areas of the watershed that have been thinned and burned.

US Forest Service:

Rian wants to speak to it too. Like when we do our planning, we work with our wildlife biologists, we work with our heritage, archeological staff. There are a lot of specialists that also support our prescribed fire projects. And we work very closely with them.

US Forest Service:

I would love nothing more than to just walk away from this whole landscape and let it do its thing. [applause] You know what the problem is? We all live here, and we are the ones that have to put out these fires in the middle of summer when they come, and these treatments give us a much better chance of being able to contain these fires small, rather than doing what everybody’s talking about, wiping out all the trees, and plants, and bugs.

Attendee I:

[?} a catastrophe is created, it doesn’t pan out. It doesn’t really weigh out. It’s the [?]. You lost way more. I mean, it’s just crazy that you would even do this anymore.

Attendee H:

If people are interested, I do have, only on birds, I don’t have one on animals and insects here with me, but I have some studies from the watershed, from our backyard, showing impacts of prescribed fire on bird habitat and bird populations.

Attendee H:

And so, yeah, have it here with me if you want to read the whole thing, but net positive or neutral to the bird’s [?].

Attendee F:

I have a question. Can you just do a little bit of it now, just a small section, so the animals can go back in there after it grows back a little bit, and do another section? Because I mean you’re bringing everything down into my yard.

Attendee F:

You’re bringing mountain lions, bears, everything.

Attendee F:

Because my house is right next to —

US Forest Service:

Really this area is 8,000 acres, and this is 650. The animals can move in a multitude of different directions —

Attendee F:

I know but they’re all gonna be coming down, because you said you’re going to start the fire at the top, so all of them are going to be coming down, and they’re going to come right into my yard.

Multiple speakers

[?]

US Forest Service:

Did you have a question?

Attendee Q:

Is there anyone representing the Pueblos here at this meeting?

Attendee C:

Well, you know, it’s difficult for people to know about these meetings because they don’t notice them. Did you notice the article on paper today?

Attendee R:

Could you let me? Could you let me —

Attendee C:

I’m just making a point so you understand.

Attendee C:

They don’t want us here. They don’t want us to be heard.

Attendee Q:

I understand. I’ve just been through this with Tesuque’s Bishop’s Lodge protest, which we worked on. But my other question relates to Tesuque. As a new homeowner in that region, I’m wondering, you know, we’re on Three Rock Road.

Attendee Q:

I don’t know if you know where that is, but we do have bears and mountain lions as this young lady over here pointed out. And I’m okay with them coming down to my house. They already do, so it’s okay.

Attendee Q:

But what I do wonder is when you walk in the forest, when you go in the back part of the forest on that dirt road there, I really enjoy walking in there. And I’m wondering, is that going to be burned?

Attendee Q:

Where there’s old, large — and I also walk the Tesuque Creek. Are those regions planned to be burned that have these gigantic pine trees in them? What will happen to those trees? So that’s my question.

US Forest Service:

I’m not sure where Three Rock Road is.

Attendee Q:

All right, Three Rock Road is off of 74. Like you were going up to Four Seasons, and it’s in the back below the Santa Fe Forest.

US Forest Service:

So the first question is — you know — I have been working with the Pueblo to Tesuque. I helped them burn their piles on the Vigil Grant land. Also, when we were burning the piles in Pacheco, we helped them burn their piles on the Vigil Grant land.

US Forest Service:

And we also worked with the Aspen Ranch land and wrote a burn plan for that. So, we have been working.

Attendee Q:

Will you be burning on Pueblo land?

US Forest Service:

Not this winter.

Attendee Q:

Do you anticipate that there will be damage to these large pine trees that are there?

US Forest Service:

No. The idea is that, our modeling is designed to keep the flame lengths like a foot to two foot, low intensity prescribed burning. Ponderosa pines have thick bark. Most of these big large pines that you’re talking about have seen several entries of fire.

US Forest Service:

You see the fire scars on them. And that’s how we know what the fire history was. You can core right into them and count the fire scars within those old trees.

Attendee N:

And those fire scars are hundreds of years old sometimes.

Attendee K:

But isn’t it true that in the Pacheco burn in 2019, that was supposed to be a low-intensity burn with snow on the ground, and there was a whole hillside of burned trees. All the leaves were dead on most of the trees on an entire hillside.

US Forest Service:

I’ve been I was just up in Pacheco Canyon. I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Yeah, this was the burn that we did in 2019. Right along this ridge here there was a little bit of a high intensity right on this ridge, but all that canopy is —

Attendee K:

Well on the Forest Service’s burn tour in 2019, I was on that. And where we were standing, and Supervisor Melonas and Ranger Hurlocker were there, and right behind them — What about this whole hill? And they said, well, it got a little hot there.

Attendee K:

I’m just saying that you intend to have low intensity burns, but there are hotspots and of course there are escapes. And most of the fire around here has been escapes in the last few years. So what is everybody supposed to think?

Attendee J:

So far this evening is why can’t the Forest Service make exceptions? So the gentleman who built his house a quarter of a mile away from where you’re planning this major long hot dog shaped burn, you can just leave the last couple of hundred feet alone and you can allow him and you can yourselves dedicate 10 times as many people as would be practical if you were gonna do this everywhere but you could take that one little thing and say we don’t need —

Attendee J:

This guy built his house here before we started doing this stuff, so it’s our responsibility to work around it. We don’t need to take our template that we got here from Washington and just rubber stamp it on everything.

Attendee J:

We can just make an exception, make an exception for the birds and the animals. That’s one of the most horrible things that I’ve ever encountered since I moved here in New Mexico 60 some years ago and it was 60, almost 60 years ago, but the idea that you would actually allow a governmental entity to burn the wild animals alive and that in some cases they actually are, it’s easy to see that it’s a deliberate choice.

Attendee J:

That the San Ysidro fire, just this past summer where there was — Indios [Fire], yeah. So they had a C-shaped natural fire burning, and they closed that opening on the south end of it, and you could see it, you could see it in real time or you could see it on the internet afterwards that there was a progression made where they actually murdered hundreds of thousands of creatures for no good reason and they’ve made a practice for many many years of avoiding that.

Attendee J:

When they use fire in fighting natural fire, they take the trouble to leave escapes for the wild animals. and when they did the Black Fire in 2022, down in the Gila, they did the same thing, they went 10 miles or so south of where the real fire was, and they did what was proposed as a backburn, which was ridiculous because it was so far away from the fire, and they closed in a huge, huge area without leaving an opening for the wild animals.

Attendee J:

That was just unbelievable to me. That’s an international war crime type situation. It’s something you cannot live like that in a decent, intelligent human being country in the world.

Attendee J:

You can’t, this is not allowable. You guys are doing something that is hideous, and it’s not worth it for any of the reasons you’re giving. It might do this, it might do that. Well you don’t have to be that kind of brutal and cruel and horrible as a society to allow that. And I hope that we can do everything possible to stop you from doing that and to make sure you won’t be allowed to close those openings or to build or to make new fires around existing —

US Forest Service:

I’m just a hard working guy trying to make a living to feed my family.

Attendee J:

You know what, I’m sure I did at least as much hard work as you as you are doing, and I found ways to do it, like when I would start to build a house I would make the owners move the house five feet so I could save one ponderosa tree. And I cared about the trees we had to cut down to do it. And I would have gotten out of the business completely, if I was in the situation you’re in, the way you were making it sound now. You’re taking out the responsibility to think well, that’s the only way I can feed my kids, by murdering hundreds of thousands of live animals —

US Forest Service:

I care greatly —

Attendee D:

It just makes us mad.

Attendee G:

Yeah.

Attendee D:

Well, there are a few things here. One is, in every meeting I’ve been to, people complain because you don’t have a good mic setup. And in every meeting, you don’t have a good mic setup. And you say you want us to trust you.

Attendee D:

And yet, you don’t have a good mic setup, even though we’ve asked a million times. You say we should trust you. And yet, look at the few people here out of the whole City of Santa Fe. And the Pueblo people don’t even know about the meeting because it wasn’t publicized.

Attendee D:

And you can tell me that you put it on your website, which is very difficult to deal with. But I only saw a little teensy article in the newspaper, and most people don’t even read the newspaper. So how could people know what’s going on?

Attendee D:

How can people know about it? You’re required to inform us. How could you throw out 5,000 requests that you should either stop the project or do an EIS? Oh, for some reason, we’re discounting 5 ,000 people’s public view.

Attendee D:

This project is so controversial, you’re supposed to do an EIS if it’s controversial, if 5,000 people wrote a note to you saying something.

US Forest Service:

It was an EIS and it’s been signed, and it’s been released over 20 years.

US Forest Service:

This is different — are you speaking of Santa Fe Mountains. This is not a part of Santa Fe Mountains.

Attendee D:

Okay, I’ll move on. We still don’t trust you because of a variety of things. Okay, in the spring you were burning all these fires on windy days when it was 35 to 40 miles an hour winds, and you were burning every day in May.

Attendee D:

I looked it up, I didn’t like that. You’re not supposed to, you say you won’t burn on windy day,s and yet the proof is that you just did it all spring. Okay, why don’t you give us, do a health impact assessment?

Attendee D:

We’re terribly concerned about the toxins you use to start the fires, the potassium permanganate, which turns into, can’t even remember what it’s called —

Attendee S:

Bad stuff.

Attendee D:

Yeah. Okay, that’s toxic. Plus all that research coming out of Arizona now is showing that because of the burns, there’s a whole new level of being downwinders where all the radionuclides from the Trinity test and from the other tests are in the trees.

Attendee D:

The trees store toxins, and now they’re burning the trees, and guess what, we breathe the toxins, and you won’t even address our health concerns, and you say stay indoors and shut your windows.

Attendee T:

Yeah, I love that one.

Attendee D:

That’s not addressing our health concerns.

Attendee C:

I love that one. Don’t you guys, do you imagine what you gotta do, get a HEPA filter and stay inside your house, or else leave the territory? What other choice do they give us?

Attendee D:

Okay, you say that this is just for little trees, except that I’ve seen a number of photographs of pictures of trees that were more than two feet in diameter that you all cut down, saying that you’re only cutting down little trees.

Attendee D:

When you say you’re doing thinning, it sounds so innocent, but you’re cutting down 93% of the trees, and then you say, oh, it’s only the little bitsy trees. No, I’ve seen a lot of photographs. Even in the photographs in the newspaper, there are pile burns showing tree trunks that are two feet in diameter right there in the newspaper, so that’s not just the little bitsy trees.

Attendee D:

Okay, your data actually says your projects caused a lot of erosion. Okay, so don’t bumble when somebody says, are you going to cause erosion? Yes, your documents say you’re going to cause erosion. And as DellaSala said — our favorite researcher who has done all these 300 peer-reviewed articles and written nine books and all that stuff — he’s looked at a lot of the sites that you say you’ve restored,

Attendee D:

and he says, these are not restored. They’re totally degraded. They’re totally degraded. I’ve seen some of the places. They look hideous. They’re totally degraded. There’s nothing left. No life.

Attendee G:

So a question for you folks, you Forest Service folks. So a lot of what you’re doing, you are, as Jan put it, thinning, and then you’re creating slash piles. Is that correct? Piles? And then you’re going to go in and burn the piles, correct?

Attendee G:

Why do you keep doing that system, keep using that system when you know it doesn’t work? When you burn the slash piles, it heats up the ground to such a point that the soil dies and everything around it is dead.

Attendee G:

Instead of creating slash piles, you could leave the material on the ground and maybe do something about the erosion that you’re causing by thinking that, oh, we’re on a hillside, so we’ll lay the trees this way.

Attendee G:

We’ll put the brush this way, and that would prevent the erosion. And then also consider removing some of those itty bitty trees from the site, rather than creating what we called in the Girl Scouts a teepee fire.

Attendee G:

That’s what you’re doing, over, over, and over again. So why? Why wouldn’t you pay attention to the science? That’s science. That is not, I’m not making this up. There’s plenty of science for you to look at that would show that you are going about this all the wrong way.

Attendee G:

The other thing is that prescribed burns have been shown to not work. So why do you continue to do prescribed burns? Why? Why don’t you pay attention to the science? You say that you’re paying attention to the science and you are not.

Attendee G:

I don’t see it.

Attendee U:

Speak to prescribed burns don’t work. I was hiking this morning up to forest road 79 turns in the forest trail 79 another two miles up but you get to the watershed boundary and it was it was logged then supposedly right there at the watershed boundary 20 years ago and it does not look like a healthy forest I mean I understand that the idea is to have the thinned areas regenerate in a way that looks healthy but there’s there are these dead logs I mean they’re dead you know the trees that are on the ground and there’s no ground cover no animals and so I just based on that observation I doubt the assertion that thinning let alone burning there was this wasn’t burned is healthy for the forest.

Attendee J:

Bravo

Attendee C:

The gentleman here from from the State — we met earlier — and I’m happy you’re here. Could you address this please: the danger that the smoke presents to the population.

Attendee V:

So the Environmental Protection Agency has done a lot of studies on what levels of pollution are harmful to the most sensitive individuals. And they’ve developed air quality standards that represent those values.

Attendee V:

Now, prescribed burning does produce smoke. And looking at the direction of the wind is important. And the time of day, and they have all sorts of considerations they need to make for when to burn, and what to burn, and under what conditions.

Attendee V:

But we have some resources available. We have at the Santa Fe airport, which is far from these burns, we have a continuous particulate matter PM2.5 monitor. And that PM2.5 is the size of particulate matter that gets deepest into the lungs and causes the most health problems.

Attendee V:

So that’s basically the best indicator of health problems for burning. I mean, there’s many other sources of particulate matter pollution.

Attendee C:

What would you estimate the PM level to be more proximal to the fire location? This fire being proposed.

Attendee V:

Yes.

Attendee C:

So you pick the proximity, please.

Attendee V:

Yeah, so the Forest Service, I understand, has set up a PM2.5 monitor a little downstream of the two reservoirs in the watershed. Basically, if there is drainage or wind toward Santa Fe, it will be directed right past that monitor.

Attendee V:

So whatever that monitor says would be a very good indicator of the exposure.

Attendee C:

Well, that brings me to my follow-on question, which is why rely on a monitor that’s 15 miles by air from the fire site, as the crow flies, versus putting a monitor or several proximal to the actual fire site so that we can understand if we’re living in the neighborhood, we might be exposed to much higher particulate matter.

Attendee C:

And then what is our choice?

US Forest Service:

So our Forest Service meteorologist, he did assure us that there will be units within where we’re burning. So it will pinpoint the particulate matter.

Attendee A:

And so will those results be reported to the public?

US Forest Service:

I believe so. Yes, there is. There’s a public facing website that can send it to you, and you can check —

Attendee C:

You know what, we don’t want to go the website. Go to the newspaper. Be honest about this thing, right? You should have done with noticing these meetings you’ve been having. Tell people ahead of time and give us time to know about it, and you would have filled this room, but you don’t want us here.

Attendee C:

You don’t want us to be here because we don’t like this, and you want us to be quiet.

US Forest Service:

Sir I talked to the New Mexican this morning. We actually sent them the news release two weeks ahead of time. They confirmed that. Sometimes unfortunately media doesn’t pick up our —

Attendee D:

It’s your responsibility, not the media’s.

Attendee K:

Why don’t you take out an ad?

US Forest Service:

There’s a few things —

Attendee K:

Send things in the mail.

US Forest Service:

We would love for you to sign up, because we can add you to our list. We can send things to you directly.

Attendee C:

We did sign up last year. We weren’t notified this year.

Attendee W:

We weren’t notified at all.

Attendee F:

It’s the same thing you did last year.

Attendee X:

Yeah, we weren’t notified.

Attendee K:

Same thing again.

Multiple speakers

[…]

Attendee D:

You’re making me very angry.

US Forest Service:

We really, listen, we really do want to hear from you. Let me just say, so we have over 7,000 names on our list. I have only been here a year, and I can tell you a lot of our mailing lists are out of date, so we are working very diligently to make sure you’re getting the information.

US Forest Service:

We do post on our website, we do send to the media.

Attendee D:

It’s not enough.

US Forest Service:

I really like the feedback and I want to continue hearing it.

Attendee D:

It never has been enough. I’ve been telling you that for 20 years and you’ve been saying the same thing, and you still don’t notify the community.

Attendee K:

Also, seriously, this announcement when it was emailed, even just, I think it was three or four days ago, I checked the Santa Fe National Forest News and Events site, and this particular news release was not posted on the site.

Attendee K:

Not that so many people go to the site. I really think you need a different way of notifying the public because every single person, whatever it is, 80, 90 ,000 people in Santa Fe should know that the Forest Service, the US government, is planning on setting a fire a quarter mile outside of town.

Attendee K:

So why not do that? You can’t talk about cost because the cost of all these programs are so expensive. Talking about the publicity, it was just a drop in the bucket. Even if you used US Postal Service, EDDM, you could send a postcard or a letter to everybody in Santa Fe, no problem.

Attendee K:

Why not do that?

Attendee J:

Yeah, that is really a very, very important and good idea, which is that it is not the, you know, you need to, if you’re able to say, well, it’s the newspaper in this case, then that’s, something’s wrong with the system because it has to be that the Forest Service, just buy a little advertising on the second page of the front, of section A, and there’ll always be something you can put in there.

Attendee J:

But you could basically have a place where we could look, and that would probably be a fraction of the cost of the time that’s already spent losing overlapping lists. I’ve probably given 15 or 20 contact information things to this cause, and it just doesn’t work at all.

Attendee J:

I’ve never gotten anything.

Attendee D:

David, if they haven’t told us about it for 20 years, I don’t imagine they’re going to start.

Attendee I:

When’s the next meeting going to be about this?

Attendee D:

There aren’t any more.

Attendee F:

So y ‘all are going to burn no matter what we say.

Attendee C:

Exactly. This gentleman just told me, what am I going to do if the lightning strikes? What he was doing is giving me an ultimatum. Respectfully, sir, I understand your position. But you said to me right up when I was standing there next to you, well, if you don’t let us do this, then you’re on your own, buddy.

Attendee C:

When the lightning hits —

US Forest Service:

That isn’t what I said.

Attendee C:

That was my interpretation of what you said, and I think it’s a fair one. And I asked you, I said, I built my own fire station at my house. Did I not say that?

Attendee C:

I’ve got three of them. My plumber thinks I’m crazy, but I said, I’ll invest the money. I’m ready, I’ve got cisterns, I’ve got pumps, I’ve got hoses. And that’s just to keep things wet until someone says, you better get out of here, and I will go.

Attendee H:

I think in this day and age, communication is hard to get through one source, like the newspaper, because so many people don’t use it so read it, so you have to go to different sources. I’ve always found the Facebook page for the Forest Service like really helpful during fires, and I have been looking at it, and I haven’t seen this on there. But for some of us, that’s a good source to find information.

US Forest Service:

And we do try to —

Attendee F:

You could put signs up in town and stuff, but you just don’t want those people to come.

US Forest Service:

We would love for everybody to know about this. We really do.

US Forest Service:

The Forest Service doesn’t pay me enough to do this job.

Attendee C:

Your job is fighting fire, we understand that.

US Forest Service:

No, this is my job. This is my job. I’m in fuels. I fight fire in the summertime. But this is my job. The government has put past me with doing this train of work as prevention for the wildfires. And I’m very insulted by people telling me that I don’t care.

US Forest Service:

Because I don’t get paid enough —

Attendee D:

I didn’t say you didn’t care —

US Forest Service:

You did.

Attendee D:

I said I don’t care if you care or not.

US Forest Service:

But I don’t get paid enough to do this job. The reason I do this job is because I care about the forest I care about all your homes not burning down. Go ahead Jai.

Attendee Y:

Thank you for the meeting. Thank you for the conversation, as difficult as it is, and as truncated as it is, and as short and abridged as it seems for many of us that would like to have this ongoing or another meeting and so on.

Attendee Y:

I’m not sure the notoriety of being the closest structure to the potential fire is one that I want to be known for. But I am, and I say that to you all because every day for the last 42 years since I’ve lived up there, I embrace every one of the views and thoughts that you have, because they’re my own.

Attendee Y:

I understand every concern, I understand the diversity of opinions, but I also recognize that part of the challenge and part of the curse and part of the blessing and part of the beauty is the impermanence of living in the place I’ve chosen to live.

Attendee Y:

And I live in the forest or on the forest. We weren’t here before the forest, the forest was here before us. That wildlife was here before us. So it’s a risk we all take. On the level of good communication, I’ve been at it with Sandy Hurlocker and everybody else for the past 30 years about how the behemoth of USDA and the Forest Service — of which these folks are just employees, they’re not making the policy,

Attendee Y:

they’re not making the decisions, they’re not creating the budget — could do a hell of a lot better job. So I think that we can keep demanding that the Forest Service do a better job in relating and communicating, while not taking it out on the human beings that are here, that are individuals.

Attendee Y:

And I want to say this personally, because a year ago I raised comments along the lines that many of you are raising that may have had, may have in part been responsible for, amongst any other factors, climate and so on, for postponing this burn.

Attendee Y:

I think Brandon and Rian, but what that opened up was the possibility of dialogue personally for me as a landowner and steward of the land to get to know some of these people and to hold them accountable to some of the things that I brought up.

Attendee Y:

And so I want to share with you, we’re all imperfect, we’re all human beings. I have taken great joy in getting to know every one of these people. So while I don’t agree with them, and I don’t necessarily agree with the Forest Service, I take great honor and respect in getting to know the human beings that are trying to do the best they can.

Attendee Y:

Because I’ll tell you what, in the event that there was a lightning strike, or the event that there was a fire, and I’ve had two right next to my property in the last twelve months.

Attendee Z:

Mm.

Attendee Y:

Two. These would be the people we’d be reaching out to. These would be the people we’d been begging to help us, come and help us, okay? So there’s no perfect solution, there’s no perfect answer, there’s no one way, there’s all types of ways of reading science, we just can be honest, we can be true, we can be respectful, and we can hold each other accountable for doing the best that we can do.

Attendee Y:

And that’s the way I live my life and that’s the way I live up there, and knowing the impermanence that, as the closest one to this burn, I’ll be first. I’ll be the first in line. Or when the rats that somebody is concerned about are gonna flee the mountains, they’re coming to my place first.

Attendee Y:

I’ve got tons of places and $5,000 of expenses last year dealing with the rats. Okay, I don’t necessarily know that they’re a result of the thinning or not. So I just wanna like, perhaps bring this into focus level.

Attendee Y:

The emotions are strong, I have them all, you can probably hear them in my voice, but I think we have to be reasonable human beings to respect one another and how we go about having these conversations.

Attendee Y:

So that we’re not pushing the people away like Rian, you know, like I told Brandon earlier today, you know, there was a moment when Ruidoso was happening this summer, when I was trying to organize a convoy of food from Tomasitas and all these places around town to go out there and help folks that were in the line of fire.

Attendee Y:

And I tuned in to Facebook and who was the person that opened the meeting? It was Brandon.

Attendee C:

Okay, we get it.

Attendee Y:

No, no, no.

Attendee C:

Thank you.

Attendee Y:

No, no, no.

Attendee C:

Thank you for saying that.

Attendee Y:

Okay.

Attendee C:

We do get it.

Attendee Y:

Okay.

Attendee Y:

We’re not here to attack these individuals. We’re here to attack the idea that this is going to happen no matter what we want.

Attendee Y:

What I’m saying to you based upon sitting here and listening to your comments: got to tone it down

Attendee C:

I wasn’t disrespectful to anybody. I’m an ex-marine, I’m sorry. I attack thieves. I don’t mean it.

Attendee Y:

Okay, I respect what you’re saying now. Let me finish, please.

Attendee Y:

I ask you to respect my comments.

Attendee C:

Well, okay —

Attendee Y:

Please.

Attendee C:

Go ahead, go ahead.

Attendee Y:

Okay? One thing that I would request is that you make this presentation today available to us because it’s a whole lot to absorb coming here. I mean even those of us who have been studying this for years, it’s a whole lot to take all this information in.

Attendee Y:

So whether it’s through a mailing list, or we can sign on to a website, or you’ll send it to us, just so that in the event of whatever it is the next, you know, weeks, months or year, if it gets postponed here, and we can study this and we can begin to better understand it and continue the dialogue with whoever is involved at the time.

Attendee Y:

So sorry for the long comments but as the first in line I feel like, you know, I have a place in taking up these few minutes that I just did. I thank you for listening. And thank you guys.

Attendee C:

We thank you guys. You do good work, and we appreciate you. You don’t understand, there’s a dichotomy here of thought, but I mean, you may understand it. We’re not mad at anybody here. We’re mad at [?] it was a giant entity.

Attendee C:

And we can’t get our voices to Washington. We can’t tell those guys who are telling you what to do. We don’t want what you’re doing. And unfortunately, you’re here. You’re physically here.

Attendee Y:

So if I may, that’s a really excellent point you’re making. And so all I want to suggest is – there is a way for us to get our voices through Washington. And that’s through representation. And that’s through the policymakers and people.

Attendee Y:

And that’s really, pardon me, fucking hard work to reach those people and do it. But that’s the only way we can. We have to sort of dig in deeper in the way you’re building bunkers and protecting your house.

Attendee Y:

To continue to do this and have this dialogue, we have to figure out a way to reach the people that make the policy. Okay? Because I realize that the folks that are in this room from the Forest Service, and the folks from the County Fire, and the folks from Santa Fe Fire Department, and the folks from Forest Stewards Guild, we’re all working within a certain set of constraints based upon policies and decisions that we don’t have control of, and neither do they.

Attendee Y:

So we have to figure out how to create allies in this process. Doesn’t mean that I’m not going to disagree with folks in this room, or Brandon, or whoever. It means that we can have a constructive dialogue while we’re trying to figure out how to shape the policy.

Attendee D:

We’ll try that sounds great, but they still don’t let the community know when there’s a meeting.

Attendee Y:

I just said, I’ve been after since the days of Sandy Hurlocker and before, you know, I think probably the folks in this room, and I don’t want to speak for any of you guys, know that Forest Service can do a better job in communicating and reaching out.

Attendee D:

Yeah, but they’ve been saying that for 20 years.

Attendee Y:

So let’s forget 20 years, and let’s figure out how to do it better now, and let’s come up with concrete solutions. And then let’s — pardon me for the pun — let’s hold their feet to the fire, you know, but in a constructive way.

Attendee D:

Then they’ll burn for another 20 years.

Attendee Y:

So you know what Jan, I don’t know, I mean I hope you and I are on this earth for another 20 years.

Attendee Y:

I’m concerned about this burn. I’m concerned about the fires that happened on my property in the last year. I’m concerned about survival right now. I’m concerned about the next generation.

Attendee D:

And I’m concerned about all the people who are not here.

Attendee Y:

Absolutely Absolutely.

Attendee Y:

I would love to see this be at the convention center where there could be a thousand people in the room. Okay? And where these guys wouldn’t be taking all the hits, where Congress people and representatives and so on that have to do with policy could, but this is what we have. Okay, this is where we’re at tonight.

Attendee Q:

I agree with a lot of points you’ve had, and recently I’m sure some people heard about the Bishop’s Lodge incident, and what happened there was that a few people got concerned about Bishop’s Lodge dumping wastewater, and then there was a protest out in front of Bishop’s Lodge, and then there was an organization formed, and what I’m suggesting is that this group of people can turn into a lot more people, and this group of people has a lot of power to help those people do their job.

Attendee Q:

They could teach us how to help them. I have a pickup truck. I’m retired. I take wood off my neighbor’s property and take it to the recycling. I would help the Forest Service do something. We could all help them.

Attendee Q:

We don’t have to be fighting with each other, because we want you to do what’s, you know, we want you to help us and teach us. It’s not just that we’re here to fight. I’m not here to fight with you. I’m here to figure out how we can save our properties, how we can save our lives, you know, and it’s important to me that my house doesn’t burn down and my neighbor’s house doesn’t burn down. And I love the trees in the forest just like you do.

Attendee Q:

And so we get emotional because we’re human beings, but we can go somewhere else with this. We could be of help. You have our names now. You could start a program where you teach us how to help you. You see what I mean?

Multiple speakers

[…]

Attendee Z:

Also, you know, we need to let Washington know, and the best way to let Washington know is to contact our representatives and our senators. I’ve been contacting Representative Ledger Fernandez about the Hermits Peak Fire because I have, we have several, several friends that were affected by that.

Attendee Z:

One lost everything, in fact, he even lost his life. So, and it’s happening up there. So, I just keep sending emails to her. Her office has called me three or four times, but we’ve just got to keep doing it.

Attendee Z:

Sending an email once won’t do it, but sending an email saying the Forest Service needs help.

Attendee Q:

Politicians can be invited to these meetings, and they will come. They will come.

Attendee AA:

I just want to make one comment. Voting has consequences. Be careful who you vote for.

US Forest Service:

Jonathan?

Attendee K:

Yeah, a few things. First of all, I’m completely with everybody who’s saying that this is not about Forest Service personnel. This is about Forest Service policy. And I think it sounds like most of us are in agreement about that.

Attendee K:

And I have a suggestion that would be important for also communicating, you know we’re talking about talking to politicians. Politicians have a problem because they are communicated to by the Forest Service, by the Forest Stewards Guild.

Attendee K:

And the message is basically that if you don’t do these treatments, the whole area is gonna burn. This is one of the things that got me involved in this five years ago when I read the City of Santa Fe’s watershed plan.

Attendee K:

And it said that the chances were one in five every single year that so long as there was no treatment, the entire, all 17,000 acres of the watershed was going to burn. And it was gonna cost about a quarter billion dollars to clean up the reservoirs.

Attendee K:

So that is a problem because it’s not the case. And I called the authors of the watershed plan, emailed them actually, and to find out where that number one in five came from. And nobody would take credit for it.

Attendee K:

And that’s really a huge problem. So the problem is fear mongering. And there is an element of fear mongering that happens. And I think it’s pretty much built into the policy. It’s built into the EAs where the EAs say that, for example, for the air quality analysis, if the treatment is done, there will be only emissions from the burning of the treatment in the treatments and no other way.

Attendee K:

And if the treatment is not done, you could look in the Santa Fe Mountains Project EA and Scott Williams’ addendum for air quality and climate. And the principle is that if you don’t do it, it’s all gonna burn, same as the watershed plan from around 2009 or 2010.

Attendee K:

So what politician hearing this from the Forest Service experts who are supposed to be, have experience in probability and statistics, how can we know what’s really going on here? Well, maybe that’s enough.

US Forest Service:

So we have about 10 minutes left. We can have more questions. If you all want to talk with Maya or Eric more, we can do that as well. Our staff and Sandy, Brandon, Rian, and I, like you said, we’re always available.

US Forest Service:

I’ve had sit downs with David. I’ve talked to Sam and Jonathan quite a bit. And so we do want to hear from you. And we want to create more opportunities to talk about things.

Attendee I:

Because of the evidence, you want to hear more? A little bit, John. No, they don’t.

Attendee J:

Yeah.

Attendee K:

Let me just say the one thing I didn’t come to the top of my head. So in terms of this one in five probability, what is the probability? I have never been able to find out what that is, except that I found out that the Forest Service does not have a probability in mind, because I FOIA’d all information on the probability of these wildfires that we are supposed to be so scared of that we’re willing to have these huge fires next to town, and that’s what people need to understand. So I think that before any more work is done the Forest Service should do a real true risk-reward analysis based on probability and all the effects of the fire. And I don’t mean the TNC [The Nature Conservancy] Risk Assessment which also didn’t mention probability in a genuine way. We need to know why we’re doing this. And the answer can’t simply be because it’s a tinderbox and it’s gonna burn really soon if we don’t do this. We need a much more thorough answer and we need the documentation in the NEPA documents to reflect what I’m saying.

Attendee K:

That’s my opinion. That’s my suggestion.

Attendee BB:

No doubt about that.

Attendee CC:

Is anything going to change, or is this a done deal? Like, are you just telling people this is what’s happening?

Multiple speakers

[…]

Attendee CC:

I get exactly what these guys are going through right now, but I guess, because I’m dealing with something in Santa Fe County right now that’s absolutely ridiculous, and it’s the same thing. We get these late notifications, and people, you know, can’t get the people who are invested to provide feedback.

Attendee CC:

They don’t have enough time, warning, whatever, they’re busy, they’re living their lives, and they can’t, they don’t come to the meetings. But I guess at the end of the day, I’m asking you, not, but please don’t do this personally, but I’ve sat in your seat, is, is anything going to change based on this meeting, or is this, is this, one of those, those meetings that is a required courtesy?

Attendee CC:

Or is it a meeting that’s meaningful, substantive?

US Forest Service:

So, this isn’t a required meeting to check a box. This is our commitment to communicate and listen, have discussions with the community. Some of the decisions, yes, have been made. This is an informative meeting.

US Forest Service:

It’s not a meeting to make a decision. It’s a time for us to share what our plans are moving forward and to take your feedback into consideration. It doesn’t mean that in three weeks we’re not going to burn.

US Forest Service:

So, more or less, if the conditions are met, more than likely we will still burn.

Attendee CC:

There you have it.

Attendee DD:

So there’s no reason to be here.

Attendee J:

There you have something interesting for us all here, because in this last few minutes, I think I’ll work my way to my vehicle, get home, and do some raking, or something else practical, that would actually have some effect, because in fact I have probably spent hundreds of hours dealing with the Forest Service and with these whole issues, and frankly, it doesn’t, it’s not impressive at all.

Attendee J:

The level, I know that you all are intelligent, and I know that you all have to make a living, but I’m finding it very very difficult to think that I haven’t been wasting my time, and there are better things that I can do, because basically you know I wanted to say, well let’s make the decision right now about when we’re going to get together, and how we’re going to avoid what’s been happening again and again, where we leave contact information, never get any messages, and I realize you know what, we’re going to spend so much time just going making the list of things that need to be done to make this productive, that I think I’m done.

US Forest Service:

Well we can take things as in inspiration for future projects, future burning. I mean, maybe something’s gonna happen in a few weeks that’s coming from this meeting that we might, we did that last year. We met a couple times last year, and we went back, and we took care of some of the concerns.

US Forest Service:

We addressed them over the winter, and egress was one of them because PNM had the road closed because they were doing. We had a bunch of piles around the burn. We took care of those piles. We’re still trying to work with Jai on some promises and commitments that we’ve made him.

US Forest Service:

So we are listening, and we are trying to make those changes, and make those adjustments. It doesn’t mean every decision we’ve made gets changed. It just means we take that into future considerations. So we’ll continue to invite you to meetings and continue to have these dialogues, and you’re more than welcome to keep coming and bring more friends.

US Forest Service:

Double, triple, quadruple the numbers, and we invite you all.

Attendee J:

Well, thank you, and I understand, again, your intention was good in coming over here, just like mine, hopefully.

Attendee C:

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to step on you. I have one last thought here that I think is important. We’ve heard your plans. The problem I’m having is I have not heard any contingency plans. In other words, in military context, if you’re fighting a campaign, there’s an old saw that says once the first bullet is fired, all the plans go out the window.

Attendee C:

So you have to have a contingency plan for everything, and I haven’t heard anything. What do you do if the wind shifts? Sunday morning, I was trying to spray paint an old trailer. The wind shifted three times in a matter of 30 minutes, directionally.

Attendee C:

Okay. Of course, I stopped that effort right away, because I couldn’t control it. If that happens, and we have wind vortexes up in those mountains, we have a Venturi effect that’s very strong sometimes. We have what’s known as canyon winds.

Attendee C:

These things come on right away. What do we do once you start the fire? What, are their plans in place? Do you have a policy plan that says get your guys out of here? How do we do it? How do we get the residents out?

Attendee C:

How do we get notice to the residents? Hey, this thing’s going on its own. What do we do? We don’t need to hear it now. I’m not suggesting you have to stop what you’re doing and tell us. But at some point, it would be good for all the people involved here to know these things and say, okay, in the event.

Attendee C:

And it’s not going to scare anybody. We know how this stuff works. In the event this thing gets out of control, use your own words. That’s your department. You would say, this is how you evacuate. Is there an evacuation plan?

Attendee EE:

No.

Attendee FF:

No.

Attendee C:

No. See, I talked to one of the assistant City fire chiefs who’s responsible for structural fires in our area. I said, do you know there’s a secondary egress from Hyde Park Estates? He didn’t know that.

Attendee C:

It’s not operating very well right now. I said. I volunteered, I’ll take you up and show you. And I’ll show you what we could do to this to fix the road, so people can use it. Never heard from him. I offered him my phone number.

Attendee C:

I said, give me a call. We’ll have coffee. I’ll take you up. I’m not naming names, but I’m saying these are important things. And they have to be included in this kind of informative meeting.

Attendee J:

Like my urge when I first heard about this was

Attendee G:

Wait, wait, wait.

Attendee J:

No, no, no, you’re up. Never mind, I apologize.

Attendee G:

So you said you’re going to take into account everybody’s comments. Is this being recorded? Is somebody taking notes?

Attendee K:

I’m recording it.

US Forest Service:

Jonathan’s been recording it.

Attendee K:

But just voluntarily.

Attendee G:

You’re going to give it to them?

Attendee K:

I’ll be happy to.

Attendee G:

It might be on your Public Journal.

Attendee K:

Might be. I mean, the Forest Service used to record the first meetings I went to.

US Forest Service:

We’re getting your feedback.

Attendee D:

Yeah, but it doesn’t change anything. You’re still not recording, not giving us mics, not informing us.

Attendee G:

This is an opportunity.

Attendee D:

We wish you would take it.

US Forest Service:

All right, any further comments? We do really appreciate all your feedback. And as I said, you’re always welcome to reach out to us. And we will send you all the PowerPoint.

US Forest Service:

And be available for any questions between now and the tentative implementation.

Attendee J:

Tell Shaun [Santa Fe National Forest Supervisor] we say hello. And we missed him.

US Forest Service:

I will. Thank you all so much, we really appreciate your coming tonight.

Prescribed Burning Meeting with the Forest Service
Santa Fe National Forest Headquarters – Sep 25 2024
Transcript
US Forest Service:

[Intro]

We want to be respectful of all of your time. We want to listen to all of you. We want to address any concerns. So we encourage everyone to be respectful in the dialogue. We want to hear from all of you.

US Forest Service:

So with that, I will hand it over to our district ranger.

US Forest Service:

Good evening everybody, my name is Sandra Jacquez . I’m the district ranger on the Española ranger district, and it’s really good to see some familiar faces, and some new faces, and I really appreciate that all of you were willing to come out and have conversations with us, have some discussions, express your concerns. I think we’ve taken some of those in, for those that were meeting with us last year, some of those into consideration, we’ve taken some steps to resolve some of those concerns from last year as we move forward into this season.

US Forest Service:

So I just again really appreciate it. We value your time and this is a big commitment of ours to reach out to the communities, to work with the communities, to work with our public and continue those conversations before, during, after and just throughout everything that we do.

US Forest Service:

Good evening everybody. I’m Brandon Glenn. I’m the FMO [Fire Management Officer] of the Espanola Ranger District. I’ll be the one that will more than likely be the burn boss on these fires that we’re going to be looking to implement here.

US Forest Service:

And this is the first one, the North Aztec, as many of you know, 647 acres. Mostly ponderosa pine, some juniper, a little bit of mixed conifer in there, some limber pine in places. There’s our elevation from 8,000 to 9,400 feet.

US Forest Service:

Key for this one, and it’s more on that map there. And Claudia will have another map that kind of shows it too. It’s the last first entry broadcast burn in the watershed proper that we’ve done. And that map on the far left has all the other units.

US Forest Service:

And the one on the northwest there, that pink one, is the North Aztec burn. So that’s kind of the final piece in the watershed that hasn’t been broadcast burned.

Attendee A:

What is “last first entry?” It’s kind of contradictory. Could you explain that a little bit?

US Forest Service:

“Well “first entry” means that it hasn’t been broadcast yet.

Attendee A:

Oh okay.

US Forest Service:

So a broadcast burn is a fire that burns across the landscape freely. There’s no snow or any sort of impediment to it, and this is the last one of those units in the watershed that has not been [broadcast burned].

Attendee A:

I see. Not last in time, but last of those units.

US Forest Service:

And it has had some pile burning on it and the implementation window is any time, really after the Balloon Fiesta. The parameters aren’t there right now. It’s a little wet. But if the conditions were right, you know anytime before the snow is where the season is for that.

US Forest Service:

And there’s this is our limiting factors here as I mentioned the balloon fiesta October 5th through the 12th, so we won’t burn anytime during the balloon fiesta on in the watershed/ We have to have a wind that doesn’t have an east component in it, so anything that could potentially bring the smoke into the Santa Fe proper area. So we look for anything that’s southwest, west, northwest winds when we’re doing those watershed burns. Smoke dispersal: has to be good or better at least 60,000 knot feet I believe is the good category. I think it’s 60,000 knot feet. Sustained eye level: eight miles an hour or greater for two minutes.

US Forest Service:

So eye level winds: eight miles an hour. If it’s above that, then we won’t burn; we’ll stop burning and try and cut it off somewhere. That’s why we look at the predicted conditions so that we’re not getting close to that. And then there’s a temperature range: anything greater than 80 degrees, we won’t be able to burn, and if the relative humidity is less than 12%, we won’t be able to burn. And then there’s our one, ten thousand and hundred thousand hour fuel parameters: four percent, five percent, six percent, seven percent for the thousands. Thousands is the one we really look at hard as far as to give us where the unit sits as far as fuel moistures go. Right now, the last fuel moistures we have: the thousands were at eighteen percent and thirty-six percent. So they’re much higher than the minimum parameters.

Attendee A:

So could you explain what one hour is – is that percent of soil moisture or what?

US Forest Service:

Well, perhaps we should get through this first and then we’ll take the questions, because I think we’ll get derailed if we start doing this again. So let’s get through this and maybe Rian can give you a good definition of thousand hours here in a minute, but the basic is a thousand hours is seven inches, roughly, and then as you go down to hundreds and tens, those fuels get smaller in diameter.

US Forest Service:

It’s just the size of the fuel. I don’t want to get into the big scientific description of them.

US Forest Service:

It’s the size of the fuels, and roughly how long it takes them to try out.

US Forest Service:

But anyhow, so moving on, this is that same map that I pointed out over here, a little bit bigger. You can see all of these units have had a broadcast in them. So this is the last one that hasn’t seen broadcast burning – it’s North Aztec.

US Forest Service:

The last one we did was South Aztec in 2021. Some of these have actually had multiple entries in them. We started, you know, up here, and then moved into the wind. And we have to have some sort of west component.

US Forest Service:

So we’ve been moving that direction with all the burns over the last 20 years. As you can see, the pile started in 2003, and then we started doing the broadcast burning in 2005.

Attendee B:

And where’s Hyde Park Road on that map?

US Forest Service:

Hyde Park Road isn’t on this map. Well, there it is, right there. It’s off to the north.

Attendee C:

So we’re directly west of the burn. Right in the path of the fire.

US Forest Service:

Well the path of the fire is actually within the unit.

Attendee C:

I’m not concerned about your nomenclature. I’m concerned about losing my house.

US Forest Service:

You know, sir, we’ll address any concerns after.

Attendee C:

I’m saying what the language is here, sorry.

US Forest Service:

We want to get through the maps just so other residents can see how their areas are affected.

Attendee D:

How far is the fire from the houses?

US Forest Service:

Which house? The closest house — Jai can probably give you a better answer — a quarter mile.

US Forest Service:

So this is the other unit that we’re gonna look to do, this North Ridge, this green. This is a boundary pile unit — cut and pile –that’s gonna be in the winter time. These are the units that we did last winter, this little hatched area here, and we did all of these units last winter in the snow. That’s snow pile burning.

Attendee E:

So you mean the most recent winter? The last winter would be ’23-’24.

US Forest Service:

Correct.

Attendee A:

So this new unit on the right in Hyde Park, is that pile, or is that broadcast?

US Forest Service:

That’s the one we’re going to do, that’s piles. The broadcast one on the map is North Aztec, and then now we’re moving on to where the piles are.

US Forest Service:

Here’s the map that shows North Aztec. There are the piles that we did last winter. And then there’s the North Ridge cut/pile.

Attendee F:

So you’re going to do a broad burn of all the North Aztec.

US Forest Service:

Yes. 647 acres.

Attendee C:

Could you tell us what the average gradient is on the burned area, please? Is that okay for me to ask that question?

US Forest Service:

What was the question? The slope?

US Forest Service:

The average is about 30 to 40 percent slope.

US Forest Service:

And then this here is our Tesuque units. They’re cutting and piling this now [points to red line on map]. But the ones that we’re going to do this winter are these green, just the boundaries. This is not cut [points to solid green area on map]. But these [dark green] boundaries here are cut and piled.

US Forest Service:

And that’s the one that’s 67 acres, I believe, Rian?

US Forest Service:

69 acres.

US Forest Service:

69 acres.

Attendee A:

So just to orient — the Hyde Park Road’s on the right, there?

US Forest Service:

Yeah. And then this is Forest Road 102 coming down into Pacheco Canyon. There’s the units just in the north here, in Pacheco Canyon, those are the units that we did in the last few years. We did Unit 4 and the east unit last winter, along with the stuff we did in Hyde Park.

Attendee A:

So the green, again, is that pile or —

US Forest Service:

The dark green just on the boundary there, the light green has not been thinned yet.

Attendee G:

And is that a road? (pointing to dark green line)

US Forest Service:

No, that’s a ridge line. This is a ridge line here.

Attendee H:

Could you identify a couple of other roads beyond the Hyde Park Road that would be —

US Forest Service:

The only other road is this Forest Road 102. It follows right here, and then you can see it kind of shoots off into Pacheco Canyon. It picks up there on that map. That’s the only other road that’s going to be identified on there.

US Forest Service:

Tesuque Creek follows the pink there. That’s a future unit. No cutting has been done in there yet.

US Forest Service:

And then this is just some shots of our drought, one of the things we have to look at in our burn plans. And I think Rian will touch a lot on this in his portion and where we sit with the drought.

US Forest Service:

So go back to that one. This is just this year compared to last year at this time. So there’s last year where we were at. These darker red and darker orange is a little bit more severe drought, extreme to severe.

US Forest Service:

And this is where we’re at now. Moderate to abnormally dry, depending on where you are in our area, in our district. And then the next one just kind of shows the whole West. You can see where we were last year, the one on the right.

US Forest Service:

New Mexico, part of Arizona, this is where most of the drought was this year. We’re getting fairly clear of the drought. And then some of this stuff has moved more into higher drought this year. And then that’s a similar picture of what we have now compared to 2022.

US Forest Service:

And then the next one shows where we were on the whole West. So most of northern New Mexico has moved out of the severe to extreme. And it’s kind of moved into other areas. You can see Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, are a little bit harder hit now with drought.

US Forest Service:

And then I believe that’s the last one for the drought. And then I think Rian’s going to talk a little bit about these next slides as far as what we’ve got going on a little different in our prescribed fire program, compared to pre- Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon.

US Forest Service:

Hi, I’m Rian Ream. I’m the Fuels Program Manager here on the Santa Fe National Forest. I’ve been in fire since 2000. I’ve been with the Forest Service since 2003. I spent 10 years on a hotshot crew.

US Forest Service:

Started here on the Santa Fe National Forest in 2011. And then moved into Fuels in 2019. I did work on Espanola Ranger District with Brandon. I was on a lot of these prescribed burns that we did here in the Santa Fe Watershed over the past.

US Forest Service:

So just to clarify, you know, all of those units that you see on that map there have seen at least one entry of prescribed burning except for North Aztec. Almost all of those areas that you see in there were thinned.

US Forest Service:

And then we thinned the canopy, did a pile burn, and then did a broadcast burn afterwards, at least one entry. So a little bit, you know, back up — why are we doing this? So this area historically burned every 10 to 15 years in the watershed. And we know that. We have some of the best tree ring studies in the country.

Attendee D:

But that’s very controversial.

US Forest Service:

Let’s wait. We want to hear all the perspectives and we can share some of those at the end.

Attendee D:

It’s very controversial.

US Forest Service:

And we can bring that up at the end.

US Forest Service:

Well regardless, if it’s 10 to 15 years of fire return or 50, it hasn’t seen fire in over 150 years.

Attendee I:

Old growth — that’s how you get it.

US Forest Service:

Well, what’s happening is, is you’re getting a really thick forest in there. The trees are growing a lot thicker.

Attendee J:

It looks pretty. Why burn it?

US Forest Service:

Because in a in a wildfire scenario, you’re going to lose all the trees.

US Forest Service:

We saw it with Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon. We saw it with Cerro Grande.

Attendee C:

By the way, I’d like to ask you, sir.

US Forest Service:

Let’s wait. Let’s wait, sir.

Attendee C:

We’re here for a reason.

US Forest Service:

Sir, I completely understand your concern.

Attendee C:

We lived next to that forest for almost 50 years. We built our home. We staked our lives there. And it’s our choice to be in that beautiful forest. We don’t want you to burn it.

US Forest Service:

I want to say one thing. I don’t want it all burned up, and I don’t want the debris flows to wipe out your house afterwards. I’ve been fighting fires for almost 25 years. We’re not just prescribed burners, we’re also on fire all summer long.

US Forest Service:

We don’t want to lose these forests either.

Attendee C:

You don’t save a forest by killing it.

US Forest Service:

We’re not killing it.

Attendee C:

You are killing it when you burn it, sir. I’m sorry.

Attendee C:

Please quit asking us to not talk. We’ll get there. We’re gonna be polite here, but we’re gonna make sure you understand how we feel about this.

US Forest Service:

Like I said, we’ve done prescribed burning in all of the Santa Fe watershed. I have a post debris flow study here that was done by Ellis Margolis and Alan Hook over here that has modeled the fire behavior in there.

US Forest Service:

And the post debris flow modeling that we’ve got is significantly less in the areas that we’ve thinned and burned. So the forest is still intact up there. I go up into the Santa Fe watershed all the time.

US Forest Service:

There’s old growth trees up there. The idea that the fire is just going to be burning free is a misconception. We’re gonna start by burning at the very top of the hill and bringing fire slowly down the hill, so we’re keeping the fire on the ground.

US Forest Service:

We start uphill, and we start downwind, and we bring the fire down the hill, and we’re reducing the fuel. So what this does is it releases a lot of the seed bank that’s in the forest floor, so the grasses come in and stabilize the soil.

US Forest Service:

And this is a perfect study of that that I can share with anybody that wants to see it, done by reputable scientists. I really do care about this forest. I’m not trying to kill it.

US Forest Service:

I spend time there myself. My kids recreate, I’ve lived here since 2011. So that flusters me, we’re trying to do something here that benefits the forest.

Attendee D:

We don’t agree.

US Forest Service:

And we get lightning strikes in these units that we treat all the time.

US Forest Service:

And these units give us a better chance of containing that fire during the summertime when it’s hot and it can destroy the whole canopy. And then cause the downstream debris flow.

US Forest Service:

So I’m gonna get to what we’re doing differently since Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon. Because Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon was a tragedy. And I’m really passionate about that not happening again. That’s something that should have never happened. And I’m gonna be the first to admit that. So what we’re doing differently, we’re doing our burn plans.

US Forest Service:

It starts in the planning phase when we’re doing our burn plans. We’re doing our burn plans for site specific, unit specific. We have a burn plan for North Aztec Springs. And we’re doing more extensive modeling for that unit.

US Forest Service:

That lets us narrow in on what our prescription is to keep that fire low to moderate intensity, so we’re not getting any debris flows. And the city of Santa Fe studies the water. Most of the water for the City is in the watershed.

US Forest Service:

And after our prescribed burns, the debris flow has been negligible after our prescribed burns. But getting back — our burn plans and more site specifics. We’re doing modeling for those that narrows in on our prescription.

US Forest Service:

And then how many resources we need if a fire gets out. We’re modeling for the fuels outside the unit as well. Getting to the agency ignition authorization, we have more levels of accountability. So we’re briefing every season before we burn.

US Forest Service:

We’re briefing our congressionals. We’re briefing our forest supervisor. And then every day our agency administrator, which is usually the ranger, Sandy, we’re sitting down with her and we’re going through a checklist and making sure that we’ve thought of everything.

US Forest Service:

And that’s done every day, where before it was done for a period of time. And now we’re doing it every day so it’s more specific. And we’re taking into consideration the drought. What do you do differently if you’re in drought?

US Forest Service:

We increase our organizations, we burn under a higher fuel moisture. So, and then every day a go-no-go checklist is done. The IFTDSS [IFTDSS-MTT is the Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System–Minimum Time Travel is the modeling. And we put that into each of our burn plan now, where we weren’t doing IFTDSS before — that came out of the Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon review.

US Forest Service:

The next thing we’re doing is we’re getting based upon how the modeling is showing how fast the fire is going to move. We adjust how fast our resources, our people can dig line to contain that fire.

US Forest Service:

And then we’re going another step in almost all of our burns, doubling the resources that we put on that burn just to be safe. The next thing —

Attendee D:

Do you have tankers available in case it gets out of control?

US Forest Service:

There are tankers available in the region.

Attendee D:

Where?

US Forest Service:

They’re spread out along the region.

Attendee D:

Are they in Albuquerque?

Attendee J:

This is counterproductive for the rest of us, if you can arrange a meeting, if you have someone who has specific questions.

US Forest Service:

So the next thing we’re taking in is the the holding plan is different in our new burn plans, and that is what happens after we do the ignitions. So after we do the ignitions we’re doing what’s called mopping up and that’s where on wildfire, that’s what we do after we get our fire lines in — we mop up the edge and make it secure, so eventually we can walk away from it. And that’s what we’re doing on our prescribed burns now is we’re keeping the whole organization until we have secured anything that has potential to throw embers outside of the unit before we go into the patrol phase. And then, once we go into the patrol phase, it’s patrolled until we’re not seeing any smoke anymore, any smoke interior in the unit, and then we’re using infrared — both handheld devices to find the heat along the edge, and then before we call our fires out, we’re flying it with infrared, either planes or drones that can pinpoint the smallest amount of heat. We use these on wildfires like I said you know we’re wildfire fighters as well, we’re not just prescribed fire people, and we use these on wildfires before we call them out as well. We’re using these now on prescribed burns, and then if we find any heat sources, the crews go in there and extinguish those heat sources, and we’ll keep flying it until we no longer find any heat sources on it before we call it out.

US Forest Service:

So in a nutshell. And then we’re doing a lot more of the communication and outreach. Before all of our burns we’re doing public meetings. You know I’ve been going out, talking to land grants and different communities all summer long, so we’re doing a lot more outreach and communication and involvement.

US Forest Service:

Operationally we’re a minimum organization. We’re upping it. Contingency resources: before, they were within a couple hours. We’re gonna have our contingency resources on site, so they can respond in 30 minutes to any spot fires that we may get. Patrol: before we go into the patrol phase, we’ve already done the mop up, just like we do on a wildfire. So the whole perimeter is secure before we go into that patrol phase, and then using the thermal imagery before we call fire out.

US Forest Service:

And then the critical weather step up plan is if we’re getting an NFDRS [National Fire Danger Rating System] rating and we’re seeing ignition sources of basically smoke on the unit. If we’re getting a critical weather advisory or an NFDRS rating of High or Extreme, we’re gonna up the organization and bring in a bunch of people to our minimum organization and have them ready for anything that may happen.

US Forest Service:

So that’s that’s what we’re doing differently. And you know it isn’t for sure — like last year we canceled the burn. There’s a lot that has to fall in place before we do one of these burns. One, we have to have the weather parameters, we have to have the right humidity, the right temperature, the right wind, the right smoke ventilation. Like Brandon said, we’re not gonna burn under an east wind, and we have to have good ventilation — that’s the vertical lift in the atmosphere that lifts the smoke up and disperses it.

US Forest Service:

So yeah, is that all the slides we have? Yeah, so with that, now we’ll open it up for comments and questions.

Attendee C:

Thank you. It’s a good description of what you want to get across. Thank you.

US Forest Service:

We want to hear everybody’s perspective. We know a lot of you have concerns. So if you can just raise your hand and we can try to address everyone. All right, we’ll start with Sam here.

Attendee A:

So, this modeling exercise, does that include site-specific data?

US Forest Service:

The data that it uses is satellite imagery that’s altered. It’s called LandFire, and it uses the satellite imagery to determine the fuel models that are on the ground. And then we take that and we go out and we verify those fuel models on the ground to make sure they’re correct before we start entering the weather variables.

Attendee A:

When you say fuel models, you mean dead and down material, canopy closure, what, what is that?

US Forest Service:

There’s 40 different fuel models as far as what kind of fuel. The primary fuel models up in the watershed are ponderosa pine, grass, and mixed conifer.

US Forest Service:

And those fuel models are pixelated on the landscape, and so when the model runs it takes into account the drainages, where the wind is going to funnel based upon the wind direction that you’re putting into the model, and then the fuel moistures that you put in there as well.

Attendee A:

So this satellite imagery is current? Like much satellite imagery is several weeks old or even years old.

US Forest Service:

They update it every year.

Attendee A:

Every year. So it could be a year old.

US Forest Service:

It could be a year old, yeah.

Attendee A:

That’s a problem.

US Forest Service:

Well, the fuel, I mean trees grow at a rate that is, the fuel models, I mean, we go out there and verify. The other thing that we do is before our burns that, like a wildfire, we’re putting in the containment line.

US Forest Service:

And what I mean by line is, is you have a line on the edge of the fire that’s dug down to mineral soil, so the fire can’t progress any farther. And then you’re removing the fuels away from that line, called prepping the line.

US Forest Service:

And that’s already done on a prescribed burn. It’s a controlled burn. So the containment features are already there. Most of the units around North Aztec, on the south have already been burned, and on the north it’s all been thinned and pile burned.

US Forest Service:

So the areas around the North Aztec have already been treated in one way or another.

Attendee A:

Can I just ask real quick —

US Forest Service:

One more question.

Attendee A:

The details on the Tesuque unit, maybe we could put the slide back up again, so you know you have the ridge top pile burns and then you have that green area that’s adjacent to the ridge, so what is going to occur in there?

US Forest Service:

This skinny line right here?

Attendee A:

Yeah those are piles.

US Forest Service:

Yeah, so this dark green that’s in the middle here: there’s a hand line that goes down this ridge, and this is a road right here, and then there’s a hand line that goes along this ridge —

Attendee A:

Yes, but what about the other green, what happens in there? There’s no piles in there.

US Forest Service:

There’s no piles in there. This [lighter green area] is proposed thinning treatment.

Attendee A:

Oh thinning treatment.

US Forest Service:

That hasn’t occurred yet.

Attendee A:

And that’s going to happen this spring, or next year?

US Forest Service:

It will happen next fall.

Attendee A:

Next fall.

US Forest Service:

This has already occurred here [dark green line that has been cut and piled]. The idea with this is that these are containment features. They’re ridge lines. So if you get a lightning strike in here, and this fire is burning up the hill here, you have a containment feature here that firefighters can use.

US Forest Service:

And so what’s that?

Attendee A:

And so what’s that area in the middle — unit 24 that’s not in color, between the purple and the green, right in the middle there.

US Forest Service:

This is going to be an eventual prescribed burden unit.

Attendee A:

So there’s nothing going to happen next year.

US Forest Service:

Not in the near future. So we’re going to burn these piles this winter when there’s snow on the ground, just on the ridgeline, and then next fall this lighter green area will be thinned, and then the following winter which well, it’ll probably be ’26-27 we’ll be burning those piles, and then in the future ’28-29 — I don’t know when exactly — there’ll be a prescribed burn in that unit.

Attendee A:

Okay thank you.

US Forest Service:

Alright, Jonathan?

Attendee K:

Yeah, Rian, could you speak a little about the efficacy of the handheld sensors and the aerial sensors? You said they can pinpoint the smallest amount of heat, but I’ve heard different things and I’m confused about when they stop working, what they can’t reach.

US Forest Service:

So for an example, a couple of years back, I was on a fire in Northern California. They have bad inversions. What that means is soaked in with smoke all day long. And then in the afternoon, when that inversion and lift, the sea breezes would come in, and the fire behavior would pick up.

US Forest Service:

And we get spot fires. We come in in the morning, and we don’t know where those spot fires are. There’s smoke everywhere. We fly the UAS. They give us latin longs. The crews would go in and put out those spot fires, pinpoint accuracy.

US Forest Service:

The same thing that we’re using on our prescribed burns.

Attendee K:

But I think people are thinking about whether these sensors can pinpoint something like what caused the Calf Canyon Fire smoldering under the ground or under the snow.

Attendee K:

That’s what a lot of people are very afraid of.

US Forest Service:

Well, we weren’t flying our prescribed burns, and now we’re flying our prescribed burns, so yeah, the Calf Canyon was a different story.

Attendee K:

But can aerial sensors pick up something like that underneath the snow?

US Forest Service:

Yes, we used it on all of our prescribed burns that we did this last winter.

Attendee K:

And do you expect they will consistently pick up that? It’s not going to miss heat?

US Forest Service:

It will, it will consistently, it’s not going to pick it up. If it’s underneath the snow, it’s not going to pick it up. But we wait until the snow is, is coming off of the unit and fly it to get, to make sure that our pile burns are completely out.

Attendee J:

I mean, obviously, there’s a depth issue. How deep, beyond a certain depth, it’s not going to pick it up. My common sense makes me very sure of that. There’s a limit. And similarly, when the altitude is of whatever is flying becomes bigger, then you also lose some of it.

Attendee J:

So there’s the combination of those two things combined with a mist or smoke or anything like that could easily make it be unreliable. I think it’s a really bad model for children, let’s say, to give the idea that a little device is going to solve this problem.

Attendee J:

When we know in Calf Canyon —

US Forest Service:

We’re also patrolling, and we’re also doing our mop-up after our burns. So it’s it’s another level. I mean we’re layering the levels of protection there. The mop-up after after the burn, the patrols, picking up the smokes and going in and putting out those stump holes or those logs that are creating the smoke, and then also using the handheld devices to find it, and then also flying it to further pinpoint those resources.

US Forest Service:

I don’t know if you want to speak to Pacheco too. We flew IR over it and did identify some heat sources.

US Forest Service:

Yeah, we did, in the Pacheco burn, we found, after we had been patrolling, and we’re pretty sure we flew it. We found heat sources, the guys went in, they mopped up those heat sources, we flew it again, got no heat sources, patrolled it some more, and then called it out.

US Forest Service:

So we did test, we have been testing that, we are getting heat sources with it, and they are in where they’re told to be.

Attendee L:

My name is

Attendee L: . I’m a resident of Santa Fe. I’ve been here for 10 years. First, let me thank you for having this kind of a presentation and willingness to meet with the public because I think it’s critical.

Attendee L:

Secondly, listening to your backgrounds and the way you’ve presented, it is really excellent to hear. It shows that you’re learning from some of the past mistakes. But I must say, when I moved here 10 years ago and learned about the fire up in Los Alamos that was caused by the Forest Service, I said, wow, they’ve got a long way to go before I feel comfortable with it.

Attendee L:

And then just before the fire, I called my congresswoman, who’s a friend of mine, and said, you know, I’m really concerned about the Forest Service wanting to continue to burn the forest, because I just think there’s a lot we still don’t know about that.

Attendee L:

And then, of course, unfortunately, we had that disaster both here and in the Ruidoso area, both caused by the Forest Service, as I understand it. And so I guess my point is this. I’m not yet ready to feel comfortable, personally, that we know enough, even though we might have the best people that exist here.

Attendee L:

I mean, your backgrounds are really stunning. The kind of people I’d like to see there, the way you’ve presented it, makes me feel a lot of comfort. But I still feel we’re not there yet. And I guess my real question is, I know it might be more expensive to thin and cut and put it into a truck and take it down the hill and sell it as mulch.

Attendee L:

But I think it’d be a lot cheaper than what we’ve been through. And I just wonder, why do we continue to go down this path when I feel like we’re a long way away?

US Forest Service:

So a couple things. It’s too steep to get equipment in there. We tear up the ground. The trees that we’re pulling out are small diameter trees. We’re just taking out enough that we can reintroduce fire and keep the fire on the ground.

US Forest Service:

We’re not taking out large quantities of trees, but there’s no roads. Most of this is an Inventoried Roadless Area that we’re talking about, and it’s too steep to get machinery in there. The ridge lines, we have used machinery because a lot of the ridge lines are not too steep, and we’ve used mulchers.

US Forest Service:

But thinning and piling only reduces so much of the fuel. We still have a lot of ground fuel. And you know, I may not make a believer of everybody, but I was on the Pacheco [Medio] Fire in 2020. It was a year we didn’t have any monsoons.

US Forest Service:

And so it was August. It was odd for us to have a big wildfire. The fire started in Medio Creek drainage. And it raced up to the ridge line. We had put in this fuel break here. This burn right here was done in 2019.

US Forest Service:

The Medio Fire hit this fuel break and fell onto the ground. It was a crown fire when it hit the ridge, hit the fuel break, and fell on the ground. But it created a bunch of spot fires in here that started to burn in Pacheco Canyon.

US Forest Service:

It had the potential to go all the way to the ski area, and it had the temperature, much like it was doing [?]. We brought fire off of the Pacheco Fire scar that happened in 2011. We brought fire down along the edge of the Pacheco RX in one evening.

US Forest Service:

The hotshot crew did that. They wouldn’t have been able to bring that fire down along this ridge line, had it not been for this prescribed burn. Because they knew that this fuel treatment here would hold the burn they were lighting, and it secured the fire for moving any farther up Pacheco Canyon.

US Forest Service:

We did that in an evening where if we wouldn’t have had that, it would have taken the crew a week and a half, two weeks to prep that ridge line. And then not have any assurance that it was gonna hold in the conditions that we had.

US Forest Service:

We didn’t have that kind of time. We had a day, and we did that burnout in an afternoon. And we did it because we had done that prescribed burn the year before. And I’ve got lots of stories like that of treatments that we’ve used on wildfires as containment features.

US Forest Service:

And that’s where we’re using treatment optimization models that Matt Hurteau has done that highlight where we’re gonna have the most efficacy with our treatments to locate where we’re gonna put these fuel breaks, where we’re gonna put these prescribed burn units.

US Forest Service:

And then a lot of experience is on the ground. Where is this gonna work? Where are we gonna be able to get a foothold if we have a wildfire? Where are we gonna put these fuel breaks? Where are we gonna put these prescribed burns?

Attendee M:

Alan.

Attendee N:

I’m Alan Hook. I’m City of Santa Fe Water Division, Program Manager representing the City. So what you may not know, [?] 10 years, the original National Environmental Policy Act put together for the Environmental Impact Statement for municipal watershed projects.

Attendee N:

In it, there was an option for traditional wood use, and they explored that, and as Riaan said, less than, I think it’s like 20% of slopes were accessible to do that, unless you introduce more roads in there.

Attendee N:

Furthermore, in neighborhoods in this area, right along here, Upper Canyon Road, and Cerro Gordo Road is here, all said, we don’t want wood trucks coming. It was a very strong statement, so that’s why wood extraction has not occurred.

Attendee C:

Use mules.

Attendee C:

No, that’s why, it’s a tourist draw, people would love to see that.

Attendee C:

[?] he lives again.

Attendee N:

I guess the community said, we don’t want to see that.

Attendee C:

They might not want to see a truck, but maybe the mule train would look nice to them.

Attendee N:

I don’t know how many mules they have.

Attendee C:

Thinking out of the box. Thinking out of the box.

US Forest Service:

Let us let her ask a question.

Attendee H: 0

What’s the planned duration of that North Aztec and what’s the distance from the perimeter of it to Los Cerros Colorados, and could you define broadcast burn for me?

US Forest Service:

Okay, so the burn, we’re going to be using a helicopter to do a lot of the igniting and that does two things. It lessens the amount of time to do the burn, and secondly it’s safer for our firefighters in this steep ground walking back and forth.

US Forest Service:

If we were to do this by hand it would probably take over a week to light it. It’s going to take two to four days to ignite the burn and then probably a couple more days of mop up. So that’s the duration.

US Forest Service:

I’m not sure, so the closest structures are down here. I’m not sure where Cerros Colorados is, to be honest.

US Forest Service:

So the closest structure, the closest one, is Jai’s place. It’s about a quarter mile to the west.

US Forest Service:

Two things. It’s downwind, and it’s downhill. It would take a heavy wind pushing downhill, and under the burn plan, we’re not allowed to burn under any forecasted east winds.

US Forest Service:

And all of this has containment line around it. A broadcast burn is where we’re introducing fire across the whole unit. And now we don’t just light at the bottom and let this run up the hill. That would be stupid.

US Forest Service:

We start at the top, and we light right along the hand line, so it has a foot to move. The next strip may be two feet from that, and that burns into the black that you just created, and you create what’s called a black line.

US Forest Service:

You have your hand line, and you light right along that, and then you bring fire down the hill, and you put in a black line, so there’s a black buffer there of material that’s already burned. And once that black line is nice and wide, a couple hundred feet, then we bring in the helicopter and it keeps bringing the fire down the hill slowly.

US Forest Service:

What that does is down the hill, and into the wind. So you start downwind, and uphill. Fire 99% of the time burns uphill and with the wind, except in California, where you get the Santa Ana’s and then it will burn downhill.

US Forest Service:

But, so, you know, we’re not just lighting at the bottom and letting it run up the hill and torch all the trees. We’re bringing it down the hill slowly.

Attendee F:

You bring in all those animals right to my house. I mean, every rat, every squirrel, every bear, everything is coming straight to my house.

Attendee K:

What do you do if the wind direction changes?

Attendee F:

It changes at night, fast. It blows really hard at night.

Attendee C:

And the wind is variable.

Attendee F:

Yeah, very variable.

Attendee C:

I can point to my house if you would allow me, would you please? So we can explain to you where we are feeling endangered because of this.

US Forest Service:

Sir, I want to listen too. I just want to make sure everybody else gets a chance.

Attendee C:

Actually I don’t need your permission. Let me show you something. I’m not going to take the sitting down. This is a threat to our existence. We live right there, OK? That’s Hyde Park Estates. There’s your burn. All right? We’re less than a quarter mile away.

Attendee C:

It’s a 40% slope. We look at the side of the mountain. It’s totally green. They get this thing going. There’s no way, even with the step down, that you’re —

US Forest Service:

You’ve got to worry about the wildfire that’s coming.

Attendee C:

You know what? I’ll take you up and show you my fire stations. I’ve got three of them on my property. That’s how worried I am about this. And I’m being proactive. I’m trying to be helpful. But here’s the problem.

Attendee C:

You come down in a black line, and then another black line. And what are we looking at? Before we’re done, we’re looking at a black mountain. Now, if this thing spreads either direction, north or south, that canyon runs north, south more or less, OK?

Attendee C:

You’re going to have tourists coming to town, looking at the cathedral, and seeing nothing but a charcoal forest up there. And they’re not going to come back. They’re going to go back to Texas and tell their friends, don’t go there.

Attendee C:

It’s not pretty. What is the meaning of this? What is the impetus for this? Where does this all start? You mentioned some national study, blah, blah, blah. We don’t care about that. We want our nature the way it is.

Attendee C:

And if we get a lightning strike, we will work with you. We’ll help you. We’ll do whatever we can. We’ll feed you guys. We’ll do whatever it takes. But don’t set the forest on fire to save it. It makes no sense when you have people living so close, so proximal to this.

Attendee C:

Other than, look what happened to California. Burn them out.

US Forest Service:

If you get a lightning strike in there after we burn it, we’re going to be able to go in there and put a line around and keep it 10 by 10 in the middle of June. If you get a lightning strike up there and it’s untreated, that thing’s going to race all the way up to the ski area.

Attendee C:

It will go uphill for sure.

US Forest Service:

And what you’re going to get, you’re going to have to worry about, because fire burns uphill, you’re going to have to worry about the debris flows that come down and wipe out the houses down the hill.

Attendee C:

I watch that wind. I watch the wind change.

Attendee O:

It changes very quickly.

Attendee C:

Every minute it changes.

US Forest Service:

We know that. We deal with the velocity as well.

Attendee F:

I have a question. I know the ground is so hard, how do you dig in that kind of soil, because I mean it is hard, I mean it’s like digging on rocks.

US Forest Service:

It’s hard. We dig a line. It’s two to three feet wide. We have tools.

US Forest Service:

They’re fire tools. And we put water bars in there to divert the flow.

Attendee F:

I just wondered, because I can barely dig in my own yard, and I just wondered how you did.

US Forest Service:

Santa Fe Hotshots did most of the prep work up there. I think they got like a thousand hours of overtime digging all summer long, so, they’re tough.

Attendee I:

You know, they [?] and all kinds of things, caterpillars that overwinter, and 90% of the songbirds, [?], baby birds, songbirds, 90%, eat[?] caterpillars. And so they’ll be wiped out. They’re all in the leaves and everything that you want to burn.

Attendee I:

And you burn the grass, and so there won’t be any food for the animals [?] in the snow? Let’s see, the pinyon jay is endangered now. I mean, you’re going to be cutting down the trees. And also, the trees are actually a big thing here.

Attendee I:

You know, people [?] with the birds. But, you know, they do use the nets and so on, and they’re a big thing for their tourism and so on. And so who gets the lumber when they, you know, cut that lumber?

Attendee I:

What lumber company? Or what, you know, a warehouse owner? Or who gets it?

US Forest Service:

We’re not pulling the lumber off.

Attendee I:

Not this time?

US Forest Service:

We’re not pulling any merchantable timber off.

Attendee I:

You’re still destroying things. So anyway, for wildlife, it’s just horrendous. They’re incinerated, you know, all kinds of wildlife. And wildlife is disappearing, as far as our insects are disappearing, you know, bees, [?].

Attendee I:

So you’re just incinerating the whole thing. And also this is, you know, it’s a world class place, Santa Fe, they come from all over the world. They don’t want to come and smell smoke and see [?], and they want to [?] see wildlife.

Attendee I:

So I guess that’s about it.

US Forest Service:

Well, what I’d say is that I’ve done hikes up in the watershed with several local scientists, and the the plant diversity is more than double in the areas that we burn.

Attendee I:

Since when? What time period? When did it start? When did you start taking records?

US Forest Service:

We started thinning and burning in the watershed in 2001, is that right Alan?

Attendee N:

Yeah, it was just after that.

Attendee I:

So like historically you don’t know what it was [?] fifteen hundred years ago?

US Forest Service:

We have tree reading studies that determine the density of the forest.

Attendee N:

So there was a previous Rocky Mountain Research Station where they did one. It’s like a research branch of the Forest Service. I think it was part of the 2001 EIS, but they were tracking insects, you know, tracking those.

Attendee N:

They did also track pinyon jay populations, which fluctuated a lot. And then I think they also did some mammals subsequent to that in 2015.

Attendee I:

That was fairly recent. I was talking about historically, like, 50, 100 years ago.

Attendee N:

No, because the Forest Service doesn’t have a lot of resources every week or every year to go out and track every animal or insect. But again, kind of to Rian’s, and again, this is my, I’m in there like every other week.

Attendee N:

There’s still plenty of deer. I’ve seen bobcats, mountain lions. We get bears up in there all the time. Turkey, prevalent in turkey, because we have fifth graders going on watershed trips up above up to Nichols, and above Nichols, halfway between [?] Nichols.

Attendee P:

So they’ve seen, we have wildlife cameras for them to see. So they see deer, bobcat.

Attendee I:

Historically, I’m talking about the whole thing. I’m talking about the United States. Everything is disappearing So I’m glad you know you’re seeing through things, but what you’re seeing now is not what it used to be 100 years ago.

US Forest Service:

I’m talking about comparing areas that haven’t been thinned and burned compared to areas of the watershed that have been thinned and burned.

US Forest Service:

Rian wants to speak to it too. Like when we do our planning, we work with our wildlife biologists, we work with our heritage, archeological staff. There are a lot of specialists that also support our prescribed fire projects. And we work very closely with them.

US Forest Service:

I would love nothing more than to just walk away from this whole landscape and let it do its thing. [applause] You know what the problem is? We all live here, and we are the ones that have to put out these fires in the middle of summer when they come, and these treatments give us a much better chance of being able to contain these fires small, rather than doing what everybody’s talking about, wiping out all the trees, and plants, and bugs.

Attendee I:

[?} a catastrophe is created, it doesn’t pan out. It doesn’t really weigh out. It’s the [?]. You lost way more. I mean, it’s just crazy that you would even do this anymore.

Attendee H:

If people are interested, I do have, only on birds, I don’t have one on animals and insects here with me, but I have some studies from the watershed, from our backyard, showing impacts of prescribed fire on bird habitat and bird populations.

Attendee H:

And so, yeah, have it here with me if you want to read the whole thing, but net positive or neutral to the bird’s [?].

Attendee F:

I have a question. Can you just do a little bit of it now, just a small section, so the animals can go back in there after it grows back a little bit, and do another section? Because I mean you’re bringing everything down into my yard.

Attendee F:

You’re bringing mountain lions, bears, everything.

Attendee F:

Because my house is right next to —

US Forest Service:

Really this area is 8,000 acres, and this is 650. The animals can move in a multitude of different directions —

Attendee F:

I know but they’re all gonna be coming down, because you said you’re going to start the fire at the top, so all of them are going to be coming down, and they’re going to come right into my yard.

Multiple speakers

[?]

US Forest Service:

Did you have a question?

Attendee Q:

Is there anyone representing the Pueblos here at this meeting?

Attendee C:

Well, you know, it’s difficult for people to know about these meetings because they don’t notice them. Did you notice the article on paper today?

Attendee R:

Could you let me? Could you let me —

Attendee C:

I’m just making a point so you understand.

Attendee C:

They don’t want us here. They don’t want us to be heard.

Attendee Q:

I understand. I’ve just been through this with Tesuque’s Bishop’s Lodge protest, which we worked on. But my other question relates to Tesuque. As a new homeowner in that region, I’m wondering, you know, we’re on Three Rock Road.

Attendee Q:

I don’t know if you know where that is, but we do have bears and mountain lions as this young lady over here pointed out. And I’m okay with them coming down to my house. They already do, so it’s okay.

Attendee Q:

But what I do wonder is when you walk in the forest, when you go in the back part of the forest on that dirt road there, I really enjoy walking in there. And I’m wondering, is that going to be burned?

Attendee Q:

Where there’s old, large — and I also walk the Tesuque Creek. Are those regions planned to be burned that have these gigantic pine trees in them? What will happen to those trees? So that’s my question.

US Forest Service:

I’m not sure where Three Rock Road is.

Attendee Q:

All right, Three Rock Road is off of 74. Like you were going up to Four Seasons, and it’s in the back below the Santa Fe Forest.

US Forest Service:

So the first question is — you know — I have been working with the Pueblo to Tesuque. I helped them burn their piles on the Vigil Grant land. Also, when we were burning the piles in Pacheco, we helped them burn their piles on the Vigil Grant land.

US Forest Service:

And we also worked with the Aspen Ranch land and wrote a burn plan for that. So, we have been working.

Attendee Q:

Will you be burning on Pueblo land?

US Forest Service:

Not this winter.

Attendee Q:

Do you anticipate that there will be damage to these large pine trees that are there?

US Forest Service:

No. The idea is that, our modeling is designed to keep the flame lengths like a foot to two foot, low intensity prescribed burning. Ponderosa pines have thick bark. Most of these big large pines that you’re talking about have seen several entries of fire.

US Forest Service:

You see the fire scars on them. And that’s how we know what the fire history was. You can core right into them and count the fire scars within those old trees.

Attendee N:

And those fire scars are hundreds of years old sometimes.

Attendee K:

But isn’t it true that in the Pacheco burn in 2019, that was supposed to be a low-intensity burn with snow on the ground, and there was a whole hillside of burned trees. All the leaves were dead on most of the trees on an entire hillside.

US Forest Service:

I’ve been I was just up in Pacheco Canyon. I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Yeah, this was the burn that we did in 2019. Right along this ridge here there was a little bit of a high intensity right on this ridge, but all that canopy is —

Attendee K:

Well on the Forest Service’s burn tour in 2019, I was on that. And where we were standing, and Supervisor Melonas and Ranger Hurlocker were there, and right behind them — What about this whole hill? And they said, well, it got a little hot there.

Attendee K:

I’m just saying that you intend to have low intensity burns, but there are hotspots and of course there are escapes. And most of the fire around here has been escapes in the last few years. So what is everybody supposed to think?

Attendee J:

So far this evening is why can’t the Forest Service make exceptions? So the gentleman who built his house a quarter of a mile away from where you’re planning this major long hot dog shaped burn, you can just leave the last couple of hundred feet alone and you can allow him and you can yourselves dedicate 10 times as many people as would be practical if you were gonna do this everywhere but you could take that one little thing and say we don’t need —

Attendee J:

This guy built his house here before we started doing this stuff, so it’s our responsibility to work around it. We don’t need to take our template that we got here from Washington and just rubber stamp it on everything.

Attendee J:

We can just make an exception, make an exception for the birds and the animals. That’s one of the most horrible things that I’ve ever encountered since I moved here in New Mexico 60 some years ago and it was 60, almost 60 years ago, but the idea that you would actually allow a governmental entity to burn the wild animals alive and that in some cases they actually are, it’s easy to see that it’s a deliberate choice.

Attendee J:

That the San Ysidro fire, just this past summer where there was — Indios [Fire], yeah. So they had a C-shaped natural fire burning, and they closed that opening on the south end of it, and you could see it, you could see it in real time or you could see it on the internet afterwards that there was a progression made where they actually murdered hundreds of thousands of creatures for no good reason and they’ve made a practice for many many years of avoiding that.

Attendee J:

When they use fire in fighting natural fire, they take the trouble to leave escapes for the wild animals. and when they did the Black Fire in 2022, down in the Gila, they did the same thing, they went 10 miles or so south of where the real fire was, and they did what was proposed as a backburn, which was ridiculous because it was so far away from the fire, and they closed in a huge, huge area without leaving an opening for the wild animals.

Attendee J:

That was just unbelievable to me. That’s an international war crime type situation. It’s something you cannot live like that in a decent, intelligent human being country in the world.

Attendee J:

You can’t, this is not allowable. You guys are doing something that is hideous, and it’s not worth it for any of the reasons you’re giving. It might do this, it might do that. Well you don’t have to be that kind of brutal and cruel and horrible as a society to allow that. And I hope that we can do everything possible to stop you from doing that and to make sure you won’t be allowed to close those openings or to build or to make new fires around existing —

US Forest Service:

I’m just a hard working guy trying to make a living to feed my family.

Attendee J:

You know what, I’m sure I did at least as much hard work as you as you are doing, and I found ways to do it, like when I would start to build a house I would make the owners move the house five feet so I could save one ponderosa tree. And I cared about the trees we had to cut down to do it. And I would have gotten out of the business completely, if I was in the situation you’re in, the way you were making it sound now. You’re taking out the responsibility to think well, that’s the only way I can feed my kids, by murdering hundreds of thousands of live animals —

US Forest Service:

I care greatly —

Attendee D:

It just makes us mad.

Attendee G:

Yeah.

Attendee D:

Well, there are a few things here. One is, in every meeting I’ve been to, people complain because you don’t have a good mic setup. And in every meeting, you don’t have a good mic setup. And you say you want us to trust you.

Attendee D:

And yet, you don’t have a good mic setup, even though we’ve asked a million times. You say we should trust you. And yet, look at the few people here out of the whole City of Santa Fe. And the Pueblo people don’t even know about the meeting because it wasn’t publicized.

Attendee D:

And you can tell me that you put it on your website, which is very difficult to deal with. But I only saw a little teensy article in the newspaper, and most people don’t even read the newspaper. So how could people know what’s going on?

Attendee D:

How can people know about it? You’re required to inform us. How could you throw out 5,000 requests that you should either stop the project or do an EIS? Oh, for some reason, we’re discounting 5 ,000 people’s public view.

Attendee D:

This project is so controversial, you’re supposed to do an EIS if it’s controversial, if 5,000 people wrote a note to you saying something.

US Forest Service:

It was an EIS and it’s been signed, and it’s been released over 20 years.

US Forest Service:

This is different — are you speaking of Santa Fe Mountains. This is not a part of Santa Fe Mountains.

Attendee D:

Okay, I’ll move on. We still don’t trust you because of a variety of things. Okay, in the spring you were burning all these fires on windy days when it was 35 to 40 miles an hour winds, and you were burning every day in May.

Attendee D:

I looked it up, I didn’t like that. You’re not supposed to, you say you won’t burn on windy day,s and yet the proof is that you just did it all spring. Okay, why don’t you give us, do a health impact assessment?

Attendee D:

We’re terribly concerned about the toxins you use to start the fires, the potassium permanganate, which turns into, can’t even remember what it’s called —

Attendee S:

Bad stuff.

Attendee D:

Yeah. Okay, that’s toxic. Plus all that research coming out of Arizona now is showing that because of the burns, there’s a whole new level of being downwinders where all the radionuclides from the Trinity test and from the other tests are in the trees.

Attendee D:

The trees store toxins, and now they’re burning the trees, and guess what, we breathe the toxins, and you won’t even address our health concerns, and you say stay indoors and shut your windows.

Attendee T:

Yeah, I love that one.

Attendee D:

That’s not addressing our health concerns.

Attendee C:

I love that one. Don’t you guys, do you imagine what you gotta do, get a HEPA filter and stay inside your house, or else leave the territory? What other choice do they give us?

Attendee D:

Okay, you say that this is just for little trees, except that I’ve seen a number of photographs of pictures of trees that were more than two feet in diameter that you all cut down, saying that you’re only cutting down little trees.

Attendee D:

When you say you’re doing thinning, it sounds so innocent, but you’re cutting down 93% of the trees, and then you say, oh, it’s only the little bitsy trees. No, I’ve seen a lot of photographs. Even in the photographs in the newspaper, there are pile burns showing tree trunks that are two feet in diameter right there in the newspaper, so that’s not just the little bitsy trees.

Attendee D:

Okay, your data actually says your projects caused a lot of erosion. Okay, so don’t bumble when somebody says, are you going to cause erosion? Yes, your documents say you’re going to cause erosion. And as DellaSala said — our favorite researcher who has done all these 300 peer-reviewed articles and written nine books and all that stuff — he’s looked at a lot of the sites that you say you’ve restored,

Attendee D:

and he says, these are not restored. They’re totally degraded. They’re totally degraded. I’ve seen some of the places. They look hideous. They’re totally degraded. There’s nothing left. No life.

Attendee G:

So a question for you folks, you Forest Service folks. So a lot of what you’re doing, you are, as Jan put it, thinning, and then you’re creating slash piles. Is that correct? Piles? And then you’re going to go in and burn the piles, correct?

Attendee G:

Why do you keep doing that system, keep using that system when you know it doesn’t work? When you burn the slash piles, it heats up the ground to such a point that the soil dies and everything around it is dead.

Attendee G:

Instead of creating slash piles, you could leave the material on the ground and maybe do something about the erosion that you’re causing by thinking that, oh, we’re on a hillside, so we’ll lay the trees this way.

Attendee G:

We’ll put the brush this way, and that would prevent the erosion. And then also consider removing some of those itty bitty trees from the site, rather than creating what we called in the Girl Scouts a teepee fire.

Attendee G:

That’s what you’re doing, over, over, and over again. So why? Why wouldn’t you pay attention to the science? That’s science. That is not, I’m not making this up. There’s plenty of science for you to look at that would show that you are going about this all the wrong way.

Attendee G:

The other thing is that prescribed burns have been shown to not work. So why do you continue to do prescribed burns? Why? Why don’t you pay attention to the science? You say that you’re paying attention to the science and you are not.

Attendee G:

I don’t see it.

Attendee U:

Speak to prescribed burns don’t work. I was hiking this morning up to forest road 79 turns in the forest trail 79 another two miles up but you get to the watershed boundary and it was it was logged then supposedly right there at the watershed boundary 20 years ago and it does not look like a healthy forest I mean I understand that the idea is to have the thinned areas regenerate in a way that looks healthy but there’s there are these dead logs I mean they’re dead you know the trees that are on the ground and there’s no ground cover no animals and so I just based on that observation I doubt the assertion that thinning let alone burning there was this wasn’t burned is healthy for the forest.

Attendee J:

Bravo

Attendee C:

The gentleman here from from the State — we met earlier — and I’m happy you’re here. Could you address this please: the danger that the smoke presents to the population.

Attendee V:

So the Environmental Protection Agency has done a lot of studies on what levels of pollution are harmful to the most sensitive individuals. And they’ve developed air quality standards that represent those values.

Attendee V:

Now, prescribed burning does produce smoke. And looking at the direction of the wind is important. And the time of day, and they have all sorts of considerations they need to make for when to burn, and what to burn, and under what conditions.

Attendee V:

But we have some resources available. We have at the Santa Fe airport, which is far from these burns, we have a continuous particulate matter PM2.5 monitor. And that PM2.5 is the size of particulate matter that gets deepest into the lungs and causes the most health problems.

Attendee V:

So that’s basically the best indicator of health problems for burning. I mean, there’s many other sources of particulate matter pollution.

Attendee C:

What would you estimate the PM level to be more proximal to the fire location? This fire being proposed.

Attendee V:

Yes.

Attendee C:

So you pick the proximity, please.

Attendee V:

Yeah, so the Forest Service, I understand, has set up a PM2.5 monitor a little downstream of the two reservoirs in the watershed. Basically, if there is drainage or wind toward Santa Fe, it will be directed right past that monitor.

Attendee V:

So whatever that monitor says would be a very good indicator of the exposure.

Attendee C:

Well, that brings me to my follow-on question, which is why rely on a monitor that’s 15 miles by air from the fire site, as the crow flies, versus putting a monitor or several proximal to the actual fire site so that we can understand if we’re living in the neighborhood, we might be exposed to much higher particulate matter.

Attendee C:

And then what is our choice?

US Forest Service:

So our Forest Service meteorologist, he did assure us that there will be units within where we’re burning. So it will pinpoint the particulate matter.

Attendee A:

And so will those results be reported to the public?

US Forest Service:

I believe so. Yes, there is. There’s a public facing website that can send it to you, and you can check —

Attendee C:

You know what, we don’t want to go the website. Go to the newspaper. Be honest about this thing, right? You should have done with noticing these meetings you’ve been having. Tell people ahead of time and give us time to know about it, and you would have filled this room, but you don’t want us here.

Attendee C:

You don’t want us to be here because we don’t like this, and you want us to be quiet.

US Forest Service:

Sir I talked to the New Mexican this morning. We actually sent them the news release two weeks ahead of time. They confirmed that. Sometimes unfortunately media doesn’t pick up our —

Attendee D:

It’s your responsibility, not the media’s.

Attendee K:

Why don’t you take out an ad?

US Forest Service:

There’s a few things —

Attendee K:

Send things in the mail.

US Forest Service:

We would love for you to sign up, because we can add you to our list. We can send things to you directly.

Attendee C:

We did sign up last year. We weren’t notified this year.

Attendee W:

We weren’t notified at all.

Attendee F:

It’s the same thing you did last year.

Attendee X:

Yeah, we weren’t notified.

Attendee K:

Same thing again.

Multiple speakers

[…]

Attendee D:

You’re making me very angry.

US Forest Service:

We really, listen, we really do want to hear from you. Let me just say, so we have over 7,000 names on our list. I have only been here a year, and I can tell you a lot of our mailing lists are out of date, so we are working very diligently to make sure you’re getting the information.

US Forest Service:

We do post on our website, we do send to the media.

Attendee D:

It’s not enough.

US Forest Service:

I really like the feedback and I want to continue hearing it.

Attendee D:

It never has been enough. I’ve been telling you that for 20 years and you’ve been saying the same thing, and you still don’t notify the community.

Attendee K:

Also, seriously, this announcement when it was emailed, even just, I think it was three or four days ago, I checked the Santa Fe National Forest News and Events site, and this particular news release was not posted on the site.

Attendee K:

Not that so many people go to the site. I really think you need a different way of notifying the public because every single person, whatever it is, 80, 90 ,000 people in Santa Fe should know that the Forest Service, the US government, is planning on setting a fire a quarter mile outside of town.

Attendee K:

So why not do that? You can’t talk about cost because the cost of all these programs are so expensive. Talking about the publicity, it was just a drop in the bucket. Even if you used US Postal Service, EDDM, you could send a postcard or a letter to everybody in Santa Fe, no problem.

Attendee K:

Why not do that?

Attendee J:

Yeah, that is really a very, very important and good idea, which is that it is not the, you know, you need to, if you’re able to say, well, it’s the newspaper in this case, then that’s, something’s wrong with the system because it has to be that the Forest Service, just buy a little advertising on the second page of the front, of section A, and there’ll always be something you can put in there.

Attendee J:

But you could basically have a place where we could look, and that would probably be a fraction of the cost of the time that’s already spent losing overlapping lists. I’ve probably given 15 or 20 contact information things to this cause, and it just doesn’t work at all.

Attendee J:

I’ve never gotten anything.

Attendee D:

David, if they haven’t told us about it for 20 years, I don’t imagine they’re going to start.

Attendee I:

When’s the next meeting going to be about this?

Attendee D:

There aren’t any more.

Attendee F:

So y ‘all are going to burn no matter what we say.

Attendee C:

Exactly. This gentleman just told me, what am I going to do if the lightning strikes? What he was doing is giving me an ultimatum. Respectfully, sir, I understand your position. But you said to me right up when I was standing there next to you, well, if you don’t let us do this, then you’re on your own, buddy.

Attendee C:

When the lightning hits —

US Forest Service:

That isn’t what I said.

Attendee C:

That was my interpretation of what you said, and I think it’s a fair one. And I asked you, I said, I built my own fire station at my house. Did I not say that?

Attendee C:

I’ve got three of them. My plumber thinks I’m crazy, but I said, I’ll invest the money. I’m ready, I’ve got cisterns, I’ve got pumps, I’ve got hoses. And that’s just to keep things wet until someone says, you better get out of here, and I will go.

Attendee H:

I think in this day and age, communication is hard to get through one source, like the newspaper, because so many people don’t use it so read it, so you have to go to different sources. I’ve always found the Facebook page for the Forest Service like really helpful during fires, and I have been looking at it, and I haven’t seen this on there. But for some of us, that’s a good source to find information.

US Forest Service:

And we do try to —

Attendee F:

You could put signs up in town and stuff, but you just don’t want those people to come.

US Forest Service:

We would love for everybody to know about this. We really do.

US Forest Service:

The Forest Service doesn’t pay me enough to do this job.

Attendee C:

Your job is fighting fire, we understand that.

US Forest Service:

No, this is my job. This is my job. I’m in fuels. I fight fire in the summertime. But this is my job. The government has put past me with doing this train of work as prevention for the wildfires. And I’m very insulted by people telling me that I don’t care.

US Forest Service:

Because I don’t get paid enough —

Attendee D:

I didn’t say you didn’t care —

US Forest Service:

You did.

Attendee D:

I said I don’t care if you care or not.

US Forest Service:

But I don’t get paid enough to do this job. The reason I do this job is because I care about the forest I care about all your homes not burning down. Go ahead Jai.

Attendee Y:

Thank you for the meeting. Thank you for the conversation, as difficult as it is, and as truncated as it is, and as short and abridged as it seems for many of us that would like to have this ongoing or another meeting and so on.

Attendee Y:

I’m not sure the notoriety of being the closest structure to the potential fire is one that I want to be known for. But I am, and I say that to you all because every day for the last 42 years since I’ve lived up there, I embrace every one of the views and thoughts that you have, because they’re my own.

Attendee Y:

I understand every concern, I understand the diversity of opinions, but I also recognize that part of the challenge and part of the curse and part of the blessing and part of the beauty is the impermanence of living in the place I’ve chosen to live.

Attendee Y:

And I live in the forest or on the forest. We weren’t here before the forest, the forest was here before us. That wildlife was here before us. So it’s a risk we all take. On the level of good communication, I’ve been at it with Sandy Hurlocker and everybody else for the past 30 years about how the behemoth of USDA and the Forest Service — of which these folks are just employees, they’re not making the policy,

Attendee Y:

they’re not making the decisions, they’re not creating the budget — could do a hell of a lot better job. So I think that we can keep demanding that the Forest Service do a better job in relating and communicating, while not taking it out on the human beings that are here, that are individuals.

Attendee Y:

And I want to say this personally, because a year ago I raised comments along the lines that many of you are raising that may have had, may have in part been responsible for, amongst any other factors, climate and so on, for postponing this burn.

Attendee Y:

I think Brandon and Rian, but what that opened up was the possibility of dialogue personally for me as a landowner and steward of the land to get to know some of these people and to hold them accountable to some of the things that I brought up.

Attendee Y:

And so I want to share with you, we’re all imperfect, we’re all human beings. I have taken great joy in getting to know every one of these people. So while I don’t agree with them, and I don’t necessarily agree with the Forest Service, I take great honor and respect in getting to know the human beings that are trying to do the best they can.

Attendee Y:

Because I’ll tell you what, in the event that there was a lightning strike, or the event that there was a fire, and I’ve had two right next to my property in the last twelve months.

Attendee Z:

Mm.

Attendee Y:

Two. These would be the people we’d be reaching out to. These would be the people we’d been begging to help us, come and help us, okay? So there’s no perfect solution, there’s no perfect answer, there’s no one way, there’s all types of ways of reading science, we just can be honest, we can be true, we can be respectful, and we can hold each other accountable for doing the best that we can do.

Attendee Y:

And that’s the way I live my life and that’s the way I live up there, and knowing the impermanence that, as the closest one to this burn, I’ll be first. I’ll be the first in line. Or when the rats that somebody is concerned about are gonna flee the mountains, they’re coming to my place first.

Attendee Y:

I’ve got tons of places and $5,000 of expenses last year dealing with the rats. Okay, I don’t necessarily know that they’re a result of the thinning or not. So I just wanna like, perhaps bring this into focus level.

Attendee Y:

The emotions are strong, I have them all, you can probably hear them in my voice, but I think we have to be reasonable human beings to respect one another and how we go about having these conversations.

Attendee Y:

So that we’re not pushing the people away like Rian, you know, like I told Brandon earlier today, you know, there was a moment when Ruidoso was happening this summer, when I was trying to organize a convoy of food from Tomasitas and all these places around town to go out there and help folks that were in the line of fire.

Attendee Y:

And I tuned in to Facebook and who was the person that opened the meeting? It was Brandon.

Attendee C:

Okay, we get it.

Attendee Y:

No, no, no.

Attendee C:

Thank you.

Attendee Y:

No, no, no.

Attendee C:

Thank you for saying that.

Attendee Y:

Okay.

Attendee C:

We do get it.

Attendee Y:

Okay.

Attendee Y:

We’re not here to attack these individuals. We’re here to attack the idea that this is going to happen no matter what we want.

Attendee Y:

What I’m saying to you based upon sitting here and listening to your comments: got to tone it down

Attendee C:

I wasn’t disrespectful to anybody. I’m an ex-marine, I’m sorry. I attack thieves. I don’t mean it.

Attendee Y:

Okay, I respect what you’re saying now. Let me finish, please.

Attendee Y:

I ask you to respect my comments.

Attendee C:

Well, okay —

Attendee Y:

Please.

Attendee C:

Go ahead, go ahead.

Attendee Y:

Okay? One thing that I would request is that you make this presentation today available to us because it’s a whole lot to absorb coming here. I mean even those of us who have been studying this for years, it’s a whole lot to take all this information in.

Attendee Y:

So whether it’s through a mailing list, or we can sign on to a website, or you’ll send it to us, just so that in the event of whatever it is the next, you know, weeks, months or year, if it gets postponed here, and we can study this and we can begin to better understand it and continue the dialogue with whoever is involved at the time.

Attendee Y:

So sorry for the long comments but as the first in line I feel like, you know, I have a place in taking up these few minutes that I just did. I thank you for listening. And thank you guys.

Attendee C:

We thank you guys. You do good work, and we appreciate you. You don’t understand, there’s a dichotomy here of thought, but I mean, you may understand it. We’re not mad at anybody here. We’re mad at [?] it was a giant entity.

Attendee C:

And we can’t get our voices to Washington. We can’t tell those guys who are telling you what to do. We don’t want what you’re doing. And unfortunately, you’re here. You’re physically here.

Attendee Y:

So if I may, that’s a really excellent point you’re making. And so all I want to suggest is – there is a way for us to get our voices through Washington. And that’s through representation. And that’s through the policymakers and people.

Attendee Y:

And that’s really, pardon me, fucking hard work to reach those people and do it. But that’s the only way we can. We have to sort of dig in deeper in the way you’re building bunkers and protecting your house.

Attendee Y:

To continue to do this and have this dialogue, we have to figure out a way to reach the people that make the policy. Okay? Because I realize that the folks that are in this room from the Forest Service, and the folks from the County Fire, and the folks from Santa Fe Fire Department, and the folks from Forest Stewards Guild, we’re all working within a certain set of constraints based upon policies and decisions that we don’t have control of, and neither do they.

Attendee Y:

So we have to figure out how to create allies in this process. Doesn’t mean that I’m not going to disagree with folks in this room, or Brandon, or whoever. It means that we can have a constructive dialogue while we’re trying to figure out how to shape the policy.

Attendee D:

We’ll try that sounds great, but they still don’t let the community know when there’s a meeting.

Attendee Y:

I just said, I’ve been after since the days of Sandy Hurlocker and before, you know, I think probably the folks in this room, and I don’t want to speak for any of you guys, know that Forest Service can do a better job in communicating and reaching out.

Attendee D:

Yeah, but they’ve been saying that for 20 years.

Attendee Y:

So let’s forget 20 years, and let’s figure out how to do it better now, and let’s come up with concrete solutions. And then let’s — pardon me for the pun — let’s hold their feet to the fire, you know, but in a constructive way.

Attendee D:

Then they’ll burn for another 20 years.

Attendee Y:

So you know what Jan, I don’t know, I mean I hope you and I are on this earth for another 20 years.

Attendee Y:

I’m concerned about this burn. I’m concerned about the fires that happened on my property in the last year. I’m concerned about survival right now. I’m concerned about the next generation.

Attendee D:

And I’m concerned about all the people who are not here.

Attendee Y:

Absolutely Absolutely.

Attendee Y:

I would love to see this be at the convention center where there could be a thousand people in the room. Okay? And where these guys wouldn’t be taking all the hits, where Congress people and representatives and so on that have to do with policy could, but this is what we have. Okay, this is where we’re at tonight.

Attendee Q:

I agree with a lot of points you’ve had, and recently I’m sure some people heard about the Bishop’s Lodge incident, and what happened there was that a few people got concerned about Bishop’s Lodge dumping wastewater, and then there was a protest out in front of Bishop’s Lodge, and then there was an organization formed, and what I’m suggesting is that this group of people can turn into a lot more people, and this group of people has a lot of power to help those people do their job.

Attendee Q:

They could teach us how to help them. I have a pickup truck. I’m retired. I take wood off my neighbor’s property and take it to the recycling. I would help the Forest Service do something. We could all help them.

Attendee Q:

We don’t have to be fighting with each other, because we want you to do what’s, you know, we want you to help us and teach us. It’s not just that we’re here to fight. I’m not here to fight with you. I’m here to figure out how we can save our properties, how we can save our lives, you know, and it’s important to me that my house doesn’t burn down and my neighbor’s house doesn’t burn down. And I love the trees in the forest just like you do.

Attendee Q:

And so we get emotional because we’re human beings, but we can go somewhere else with this. We could be of help. You have our names now. You could start a program where you teach us how to help you. You see what I mean?

Multiple speakers

[…]

Attendee Z:

Also, you know, we need to let Washington know, and the best way to let Washington know is to contact our representatives and our senators. I’ve been contacting Representative Ledger Fernandez about the Hermits Peak Fire because I have, we have several, several friends that were affected by that.

Attendee Z:

One lost everything, in fact, he even lost his life. So, and it’s happening up there. So, I just keep sending emails to her. Her office has called me three or four times, but we’ve just got to keep doing it.

Attendee Z:

Sending an email once won’t do it, but sending an email saying the Forest Service needs help.

Attendee Q:

Politicians can be invited to these meetings, and they will come. They will come.

Attendee AA:

I just want to make one comment. Voting has consequences. Be careful who you vote for.

US Forest Service:

Jonathan?

Attendee K:

Yeah, a few things. First of all, I’m completely with everybody who’s saying that this is not about Forest Service personnel. This is about Forest Service policy. And I think it sounds like most of us are in agreement about that.

Attendee K:

And I have a suggestion that would be important for also communicating, you know we’re talking about talking to politicians. Politicians have a problem because they are communicated to by the Forest Service, by the Forest Stewards Guild.

Attendee K:

And the message is basically that if you don’t do these treatments, the whole area is gonna burn. This is one of the things that got me involved in this five years ago when I read the City of Santa Fe’s watershed plan.

Attendee K:

And it said that the chances were one in five every single year that so long as there was no treatment, the entire, all 17,000 acres of the watershed was going to burn. And it was gonna cost about a quarter billion dollars to clean up the reservoirs.

Attendee K:

So that is a problem because it’s not the case. And I called the authors of the watershed plan, emailed them actually, and to find out where that number one in five came from. And nobody would take credit for it.

Attendee K:

And that’s really a huge problem. So the problem is fear mongering. And there is an element of fear mongering that happens. And I think it’s pretty much built into the policy. It’s built into the EAs where the EAs say that, for example, for the air quality analysis, if the treatment is done, there will be only emissions from the burning of the treatment in the treatments and no other way.

Attendee K:

And if the treatment is not done, you could look in the Santa Fe Mountains Project EA and Scott Williams’ addendum for air quality and climate. And the principle is that if you don’t do it, it’s all gonna burn, same as the watershed plan from around 2009 or 2010.

Attendee K:

So what politician hearing this from the Forest Service experts who are supposed to be, have experience in probability and statistics, how can we know what’s really going on here? Well, maybe that’s enough.

US Forest Service:

So we have about 10 minutes left. We can have more questions. If you all want to talk with Maya or Eric more, we can do that as well. Our staff and Sandy, Brandon, Rian, and I, like you said, we’re always available.

US Forest Service:

I’ve had sit downs with David. I’ve talked to Sam and Jonathan quite a bit. And so we do want to hear from you. And we want to create more opportunities to talk about things.

Attendee I:

Because of the evidence, you want to hear more? A little bit, John. No, they don’t.

Attendee J:

Yeah.

Attendee K:

Let me just say the one thing I didn’t come to the top of my head. So in terms of this one in five probability, what is the probability? I have never been able to find out what that is, except that I found out that the Forest Service does not have a probability in mind, because I FOIA’d all information on the probability of these wildfires that we are supposed to be so scared of that we’re willing to have these huge fires next to town, and that’s what people need to understand. So I think that before any more work is done the Forest Service should do a real true risk-reward analysis based on probability and all the effects of the fire. And I don’t mean the TNC [The Nature Conservancy] Risk Assessment which also didn’t mention probability in a genuine way. We need to know why we’re doing this. And the answer can’t simply be because it’s a tinderbox and it’s gonna burn really soon if we don’t do this. We need a much more thorough answer and we need the documentation in the NEPA documents to reflect what I’m saying.

Attendee K:

That’s my opinion. That’s my suggestion.

Attendee BB:

No doubt about that.

Attendee CC:

Is anything going to change, or is this a done deal? Like, are you just telling people this is what’s happening?

Multiple speakers

[…]

Attendee CC:

I get exactly what these guys are going through right now, but I guess, because I’m dealing with something in Santa Fe County right now that’s absolutely ridiculous, and it’s the same thing. We get these late notifications, and people, you know, can’t get the people who are invested to provide feedback.

Attendee CC:

They don’t have enough time, warning, whatever, they’re busy, they’re living their lives, and they can’t, they don’t come to the meetings. But I guess at the end of the day, I’m asking you, not, but please don’t do this personally, but I’ve sat in your seat, is, is anything going to change based on this meeting, or is this, is this, one of those, those meetings that is a required courtesy?

Attendee CC:

Or is it a meeting that’s meaningful, substantive?

US Forest Service:

So, this isn’t a required meeting to check a box. This is our commitment to communicate and listen, have discussions with the community. Some of the decisions, yes, have been made. This is an informative meeting.

US Forest Service:

It’s not a meeting to make a decision. It’s a time for us to share what our plans are moving forward and to take your feedback into consideration. It doesn’t mean that in three weeks we’re not going to burn.

US Forest Service:

So, more or less, if the conditions are met, more than likely we will still burn.

Attendee CC:

There you have it.

Attendee DD:

So there’s no reason to be here.

Attendee J:

There you have something interesting for us all here, because in this last few minutes, I think I’ll work my way to my vehicle, get home, and do some raking, or something else practical, that would actually have some effect, because in fact I have probably spent hundreds of hours dealing with the Forest Service and with these whole issues, and frankly, it doesn’t, it’s not impressive at all.

Attendee J:

The level, I know that you all are intelligent, and I know that you all have to make a living, but I’m finding it very very difficult to think that I haven’t been wasting my time, and there are better things that I can do, because basically you know I wanted to say, well let’s make the decision right now about when we’re going to get together, and how we’re going to avoid what’s been happening again and again, where we leave contact information, never get any messages, and I realize you know what, we’re going to spend so much time just going making the list of things that need to be done to make this productive, that I think I’m done.

US Forest Service:

Well we can take things as in inspiration for future projects, future burning. I mean, maybe something’s gonna happen in a few weeks that’s coming from this meeting that we might, we did that last year. We met a couple times last year, and we went back, and we took care of some of the concerns.

US Forest Service:

We addressed them over the winter, and egress was one of them because PNM had the road closed because they were doing. We had a bunch of piles around the burn. We took care of those piles. We’re still trying to work with Jai on some promises and commitments that we’ve made him.

US Forest Service:

So we are listening, and we are trying to make those changes, and make those adjustments. It doesn’t mean every decision we’ve made gets changed. It just means we take that into future considerations. So we’ll continue to invite you to meetings and continue to have these dialogues, and you’re more than welcome to keep coming and bring more friends.

US Forest Service:

Double, triple, quadruple the numbers, and we invite you all.

Attendee J:

Well, thank you, and I understand, again, your intention was good in coming over here, just like mine, hopefully.

Attendee C:

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to step on you. I have one last thought here that I think is important. We’ve heard your plans. The problem I’m having is I have not heard any contingency plans. In other words, in military context, if you’re fighting a campaign, there’s an old saw that says once the first bullet is fired, all the plans go out the window.

Attendee C:

So you have to have a contingency plan for everything, and I haven’t heard anything. What do you do if the wind shifts? Sunday morning, I was trying to spray paint an old trailer. The wind shifted three times in a matter of 30 minutes, directionally.

Attendee C:

Okay. Of course, I stopped that effort right away, because I couldn’t control it. If that happens, and we have wind vortexes up in those mountains, we have a Venturi effect that’s very strong sometimes. We have what’s known as canyon winds.

Attendee C:

These things come on right away. What do we do once you start the fire? What, are their plans in place? Do you have a policy plan that says get your guys out of here? How do we do it? How do we get the residents out?

Attendee C:

How do we get notice to the residents? Hey, this thing’s going on its own. What do we do? We don’t need to hear it now. I’m not suggesting you have to stop what you’re doing and tell us. But at some point, it would be good for all the people involved here to know these things and say, okay, in the event.

Attendee C:

And it’s not going to scare anybody. We know how this stuff works. In the event this thing gets out of control, use your own words. That’s your department. You would say, this is how you evacuate. Is there an evacuation plan?

Attendee EE:

No.

Attendee FF:

No.

Attendee C:

No. See, I talked to one of the assistant City fire chiefs who’s responsible for structural fires in our area. I said, do you know there’s a secondary egress from Hyde Park Estates? He didn’t know that.

Attendee C:

It’s not operating very well right now. I said. I volunteered, I’ll take you up and show you. And I’ll show you what we could do to this to fix the road, so people can use it. Never heard from him. I offered him my phone number.

Attendee C:

I said, give me a call. We’ll have coffee. I’ll take you up. I’m not naming names, but I’m saying these are important things. And they have to be included in this kind of informative meeting.

Attendee J:

Like my urge when I first heard about this was

Attendee G:

Wait, wait, wait.

Attendee J:

No, no, no, you’re up. Never mind, I apologize.

Attendee G:

So you said you’re going to take into account everybody’s comments. Is this being recorded? Is somebody taking notes?

Attendee K:

I’m recording it.

US Forest Service:

Jonathan’s been recording it.

Attendee K:

But just voluntarily.

Attendee G:

You’re going to give it to them?

Attendee K:

I’ll be happy to.

Attendee G:

It might be on your Public Journal.

Attendee K:

Might be. I mean, the Forest Service used to record the first meetings I went to.

US Forest Service::

We’re getting your feedback.

Attendee D:

Yeah, but it doesn’t change anything. You’re still not recording, not giving us mics, not informing us.

Attendee G:

This is an opportunity.

Attendee D:

We wish you would take it.

US Forest Service::

All right, any further comments? We do really appreciate all your feedback. And as I said, you’re always welcome to reach out to us. And we will send you all the PowerPoint.

US Forest Service::

And be available for any questions between now and the tentative implementation.

Attendee J:

Tell Shaun [Santa Fe National Forest Supervisor] we say hello. And we missed him.

US Forest Service:

I will. Thank you all so much, we really appreciate your coming tonight.