Our family of four lives in beautiful southern Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay. The picture featured above is in green county.
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TPR and FIREWISE OVER THE YEARS
December 5, 2005, on behalf of Taos Pines Ranch, the first and premier Firewise designation was awarded. Judith Leraas Cook, Firewise representative and Karen Lightfoot, of New Mexico State Forestry, made the presentation to Linda Ford, then President of TPR POA, at the county commission meeting in Raton. In 2006, the Firewise Leadership Award, of which only five people in the USA qualified, was presented to Linda Ford for her leadership skills in the field of Firewise education and practice.
Fire safety became the new mantra seeking possible responses for forest safety. One response was State and Federal funding for thinning the over grown Taos Pines Ranch forest, at no cost to property owners. Another response came with the guidance of the Wildland Urban Interface, forestry and fire officials to develop the first Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP), granted in 2005, as a collaborative approach to community fire safety. Another response was the donation of two parcels of land to the Colfax County, in exchange for a commitment for a fire station at the lower entrance Taos Pines Ranch.Many surrounding communities have since followed the lead set by Taos Pines Ranch earning the Firewise designation status for their communities. The resulting hard work by many collective Firewise communities led to the creation of the Colfax County Coalition of Firewise Communities (CCCFC) for the purpose of collaborative education for healthy forests and wildland fire mitigation. One example of CCCFC efforts was the creation of policies and procedures that were presented to and accepted by the Colfax County Commission for the use of a county chipper and an employee for community "Chipper Days" in coalition communities.
- LATEST CCCFC MINUTES
This page was last updated: December 7, 2011
FULL SCALE FIRE DRILL AT TAOS PINES
by Diana Pospisil
Late this last August, Fire Chief Bob Coss headed up a fire drill at our residence in Taos Pines. This was a full scale drill, that included set up of free standing water tanks and hoses run from the front of our property on Pam Coleman all the way back past our house. The drill was run exactly as if there was a real fire, with water pumped at full velocity. It provided a training opportunity for volunteer firefighters from all over Moreno Valley, and a test to see how well current procedures would work in steep mountain areas.
Getting the water up the hill was a feat. Three large portable ponds were set up along Pam Coleman Drive, which fed a large pump truck close to the ponds. The ponds were filled constantly by water trucks running back and forth to Angel Fire. The truck then pumped water from the ponds up long hoses along the driveway to another pump truck near the house, which then supplied water to two water hoses placed on either side of the house. Each water hose required two trained personnel to hold it, due to the high water pressure. Periodically firefighters had to be relieved of holding the hoses as they became exhausted. The hoses sprayed water more than 150 feet for about two hours. The force of the water allowed firefighters to spray high into the trees and cover the full surroundings.
Before and after the drill, Fire Chief Bob Coss (also a volunteer) and I talked about fire defensibility, and he imparted three important facts about fighting fires in the mountains that we don't normally see in the firewise brochures:
1. There needs to be a definite ingress/egress path for large trucks to turn around on the lot. If the fire spreads quickly they need to be able to get out quickly.
2. There needs to be a place where a truck can be parked in close proximity, but not right next to, the house. If the house is ablaze they don't want the truck or their personnel getting trapped or hurt by fire and smoke.
3. Fire personnel need to be able to see from the main road toward the house before they will go in to fight a fire. If there is a wall of fire in the trees by the road, and they can't see through it, they will not go in to fight the fire, as driving into the unknown is too dangerous.
After seeing the extent of organization it requires to defend just one home, I have a new appreciation for the volunteer firefighters that service Taos Pines. On the evening of this fire drill, twenty-some firefighters left their real jobs and then traveled miles away to our Taos Pines fire drill that lasted about four hours total. It was pitch dark by the time they packed everything up and drove away, and probably about 11:00 before some of them got home. Kudos to this fine team of civic-minded individuals!
Defending just one house requires such an enormous effort in terms of equipment, trucks and personnel, I can't help but think that the specter of many houses in danger at the same time would seem an almost impossible a task. While we have a great team of firefighters on our side, the old adage is still true: "An ownce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." For those of you who haven't already done so, please consider reducing ladder fuels on your property, and thinning your trees, so that when a fire does come our way, which it will, it won't get totally out of hand. We don't want our volunteers to be in the position of having to decide which house to save.
FIREWISE LINKS
Firewise
Taos Pines Ranch
2010 CHIPPER DAY CALCULATOR
Please use this calculator to record both community wide and individual landowner slash removal. Complete the simple form and send it to Linda Ford, Firewise Chair to be included in our annual Firewise reapplication.
WHAT IS FIREWISE?
Firewise and Firewise Communities/USA are trademarks of the National Fire Protection Association.
Firewise Communities/USA is a unique opportunity available to fire-prone communities. Its goal is to encourage and acknowledge acion that minimizes home loss to wildfire. It teaches to prepare for a fire before it occurs. Firewise Communities/USA is a simple program workinig cooperatively with federal, state and local wildland fire stafft to provide local comminites with information about coexisting with wildfire along with mitigation information specific to that area. The community then assesses its risk and creates its own network of cooperating homeowners, agencies and organizations. The local community then identifies and implements local solutions specific to their lands.
Linda Ford, TPR Firewise Chair and family, display the new 2010 Firewise designation and the banner awarded to TPR for 5th consecutive year.
The premiere Firewise community in
northern New Mexico
A Note from the TPR Firewise Chairperson:
Taos Pines Ranch Fire wise. #1 Fire Wise community in Northern New Mexico - Summer of 2011
New Mexico has been scorched by fires, State wide. We in Taos Pines Ranch have been blessed. The blessing is called FIRE WISE. Our community has responded to our Fire wise program with great resiliency and community spirit along with the diligence to maintain the fire wise principles on our properties. Instead of fighting fires while watching century old trees and homes be destroyed, our community has benefitted by working for prevention using the Fire Wise principles that reward all of us.
Over 650,000 acres burned State wide has made this a difficult and very expensive summer. No one is untouched by all the fires, be it the cost to tourism or recreation or those who lost more personally. Fire wise is a simple education program to inform owners of ways to live in a healthy forest. And at a time of our country’s economic difficulties, this program comes at NO COST.
Some Fire Wise pointers:
Guidelines for Construction materials, plant materials, plans for justifiable defensible space, methods for prevention of mistletoe and other parasites, provision for Chipper days for our community. Healthy forest management includes the removal of small diameter trees, watershed protection and removal of ground fuels that have resulted from over-grown materials that create the ideal conditions for fire.
I urge Federal and State Forestry and Taos Pueblo to utilize the Fire Wise principles to thin the Carson National forest and Taos Pueblo lands that border our community for the protection of all.
---Linda Ford, TPR Firewise Chair
New Firewise Webmaster...Cap'n Z
