Fire Preparedness and Mitigation public meeting 051326 , part 1

[Editor's Note: A lot of information came out of this meeting, so this is part 1 of a multi-part series of articles.]

By Mary Alice Murphy

Three years in a row, NM Rep. Luis Terrazas has set up a meeting to bring fire chiefs, the Gila National Forest and New Mexico State forestry together to talk about how to prevent fires, and how to mitigate the effects of fire. He hosted the latest one on Wednesday, May 13, 2026 at the Grant County Veterans Memorial Business and Conference Center.

Terrazas's legislative aide Bruce Ashburn introduced Terrazas, who said: "I want to thank everyone for being here. This is our third year that we've done this, and we work with all the leaders in the community and now, Senator Ramos and the whole panel here, you see, and it's a blessing to have all these people come together."

He noted that ironically two or three weeks after the session held last year, the Trout Fire blazed up in the Mimbres. "These sessions give everyone in the community an opportunity to know what's going on, what Ready, Set Go is. We will go through all of that here. I'm going to speak for myself. I'm here to get information, the most updated information, things change, and so I think we're all here to learn."

"The Trout Fire really rattled me. I can tell you that Mandy and I had had conversations throughout the year before and we made it a priority to thin everything that we own, to protect our homes, our dwellings, our businesses to prepare for a fire. Then all of a sudden, what starts out in a little lightning spark, or whatever happens, turns into a disaster. And so people need to be aware of what to do, where to go, and what is available for support. And the panel will help you with some of that and but, you know, I'm going to tell you, and I'm going to start it out. I think it's important before we get into it, because once I open this up, it's going to go on and on."

He said he thought about doing a Zoom call, but he didn't know who would control it, so he hired Jesse Ochoa to record it, so
Terrazas could put it on on his Facebook page, so that people can hear and get the information that they need. "We are committed to safety in our community. That's what this is for."

Terrazas said he had received some questions prior to the session. One from Glen Griffin asked if there was any funding for this fire mitigation and preparedness community meeting? Is there any funding for the thinning? Mr. Griffin said that half the funding is gone, because of the Trump administration. Terrazas looked for the question because he had heard different things. "I double check my information to make sure that I have the correct information, the most updated information. So I reached out to the Forest Supervisor right Camille Howes, and I asked her these questions. This was her answer: 'Clarifying our funding. We understand that there has been some public discussion or concern regarding the President's initial budget proposal for the Forest Service. It's true, the proposed budget included significant adjustments. However, I want to be clear. I want to clearly state that Congress ultimately provided our agency with funding levels equal to last year's appropriations. This is a critical point. We have the necessary financial resources to carry out our vital work effectively. To be clear, we are not experiencing a shortage of funds to fulfill our mission, and we are well equipped to continue our important programs and initiatives. And then the next thing is benefiting our streamlined operations beyond our budget. We have also seen significant positive shifts in how we operate over the past year, many, many administrative changes by the Trump administration have been enacted, and a key benefit to these changes has been substantial reduction in the layers of bureaucracy that had over many years accumulated and sometimes slowed our process. We've been able to streamline the process and cut through the red tape. This has made us more agile and efficient in our day-to-day work."

Terrazas said she went on to say the changes increased productivity and "the result of these changes has been profound. Our teams are feeling lighter, more focused and freer to accomplish meaningful work. On the ground, we are experiencing an increased productivity and a renewed sense of purpose. This allows us to dedicate more services, resources and effort directly to our core mission, making our forest healthier, more resilient and ensuring the safety of our communities. We are enthusiastic about the positive impact these efficiencies are having, and look forward to continue to serve the public and protect our natural resources effectively."

Terrazas noted that "gives you the reality, and there's, I think a disconnect. You know, we watch the news, we maybe watch podcasts. We need to hear accurately what is actually happening."

He said he would later talk about some legislation that leveraged some of the work the fire services are doing. "I believe some of you guys can, you maybe on the end of the table, can express some of the legislation that that I helped pass a couple sessions ago tin the House, and that you don't do it alone. It's no such thing in our world. It takes every bit of everybody, including the support of our community, to make things happen. You know, Mrs. Lucero, yes, it's Priscilla, we lean on her to help us.And we get a lot of or funding with her help. We lean on all of our municipalities, in our county, government and administrators to help us in out in what we're trying to accomplish."

At this point, Terrazas asked elected officials and candidates for elected official positions to stand. Several were in attendance, including several mayors of the municipalities, county commissioners and county manager, Charlene Webb, whom he said was always on top of things, and was very helpful during the Trout Fire and for mitigation efforts afterward. He also thanked the county emergency manager, the county fire chief and the forestry administrations for their work in the interim to be prepared for fires, especially with the drought that continues. He also recognized all the firefighters in attendance. Terrazas also recognized the Silver Schools Superintendent who helped with classrooms for the incident teams on the Trout Fire, as well as Western New Mexico University Interim President Chris Maples, who also provided spaces for the teams.

Terrazas turned it over to Sen. Ramos, who introduced his Legislative Assistant Andy Gomez 5th., who is also running for county commissioner.

Ramos reminded everyone of the food and beverages that PNM has provided for the panel members, as well as the residents. " I think we're ready to get started and again, thank you for being here. And we've got to be prepared and ready, just in case we have another big fire." He said that at the end of the presentations, the session would open up to questions from the attendees. "We decided, let's open it up for people to actually be a part and be here and listen to the questions they have. The panel members get to tell you what they're doing. They get to tell you what they're offering. They can tell you their challenges. You can tell them your challenges."

Terrazas introduced County Fire Chief Roger Groves as the next speaker.

"I want to to talk a little bit about our local fire and emergency response. Under the county system, we have eight volunteer fire departments. They're scattered around the county strategically. Out of that eight there are 23 individual fire stations. The number of apparatus between the 23 stations is 96 and we have a total of 104 vehicles, counting the command vehicles and support vehicles. The number of firefighters in the county system, at the last time I counted, we were at 208 and we are always taking applications for people who want to join one of the local VFDs."

Groves noted that the local municipalities also have fire departments, and "we work together with them, Mayors of Santa Clara and Hurley and the town of Silver City, and we work with the Forest Service, when there's a request or a need in a support position. Our firefighters typically aren't out in the forest fighting the actual forest fire, but we certainly are dealing with the unincorporated areas of the county, when we have a fire out in the county. We also are full service guys, our VFDs and the municipalities are doing it all there. They do EMS calls, they do structural fires. And believe it or not, sometimes we get the cat in a tree. We want to talk a little bit more about educating and putting information out, so we've done a big push at the county to have a lot of the various educational pamphlets and materials, which are on our county webpage, or on the Facebook page for the county."

He continued: "Last year, you heard a lot about Ready, Set, Go, and we're going to be using that again, if we have to, if it comes to that. Some of you probably lived in the areas that that were evacuated last year. But y if you're unaware of that program, we have pamphlets all over the place, and you can get them up at the county building. We've got a few here, too. The town of Silver City has some. Some of the fire departments have them. There's a lot of places where they're around post offices. Get those guides and build your plan, and set a plan with your family, friends and neighbors. It doesn't have to be just you. You're not a lone ranger. You don't have to be on your own. But you want to work on having a plan of what you're going to do if you do have to evacuate your home or your neighborhood. The thing about it, too, is you don't know how long you're going to have to be gone. You have animals, you have family, and if there's special needs. Last year we we were able to identify people that were going to need assistance getting out of their homes and fire departments out in the Mimbres Valley did an excellent job of helping to evacuate people who weren't able to pack up and go for medical reasons or whatever the case may be. When it's time to go, it's time to go, and we're not just putting that out there for the fun of it, it's a serious thing. So we really do need people to be ready to go when that call comes.

We are not trying to create an element of fear, but some healthy fear of a fire is a good thing. Be aware, we live in the desert Southwest, and fires are part of our lives here. So I've lived here since the 1980s and there's fires to some degree every year. Some seasons are real bad. Others haven't been too bad at all. But as you all know, we're not getting a lot of moisture. The weather patterns are changing. We get a little temporary relief when we get some of these showers, but we've got a long way to go to recover from these drought conditions. I'm not trained or versed in tree mortality, so I'll leave that to the experts down the road here. But there's a lot of that too. As you heard, a lot of trees out there are brown and dying.

"I was asked about when we run our wood chipper, if that kills the bark beetle, I would suspect it probably does, to some extent, but it's not going to eliminate them, I don't think. And speaking of the chipper, I know some of you are interested in that program right now, we're we're kind of at a temporary setback. We've had some mechanical issues with the chipper, and I think we're working toward resolving them, which hopefully we can have that available again at some point. But today, right now, I don't have the answer on that. It's unseen, unknown.

"So, you know, pay attention to the radio at our SkyWest media. I see their folks are back here. They did a great job last year of putting a lot of information out for the public and bringing in speakers during the Trout Fire. They had folks from the fire prevention teams that were here as part of the Trout Fire team. Listen to that information that's being presented. And you know, hopefully we don't have to do what we had to go through last year.

"But, we need to be prepared. We're hoping for the best. Our fire departments are ready. We've trained and we've trained and trained, and of our 206 firefighters, pretty much every one of them at this point should be wildland certified."

He also said for the basic trainings, they can take the classes over the course of the year. "We have some chiefs that have over 20-years experience with the Forest Service at two of our departments, who are now running our volunteer departments out in the county. Most of our chiefs out there have many years of experience. And some of the chiefs that we have also served with Silver City Fire Department, so we've got a lot of experience at at our local VFDs, and our members are trained. We've got good operating equipment, and we're prepared. We're hoping, like I say, we're hoping for the best, but we've trained, and we've got them certified, ready to go, and we've got some folks this year with extra training. We have 12 people do what's called the pack test, which is something that's required to be out on a federal incident. So we have 12 that did that this year. We're here to assist you as the community and in our neighboring agencies and the Forest Service and everyone. We've got great relationships with all of these folks and our municipal fire departments. You know, they're well trained up too, and they're equipped to deal with things and work with us. We want to run in the unincorporated areas or out with the municipalities. We will do unified command. Nobody's got to stand alone on any of this. And help is only a call away, and sometimes help is coming without the call, we just recognize we need to get going and get some people out there to assist our neighbors so all of our departments are on board. And certainly, if you're interested in joining, don't wait. Get in your application. There's a job for everybody. Not everybody's going to fight the fire."

Terrazaz, before he introduced the next speaker Silver City Fire Chief Milo Lambert, said that he was on a cruise in Hawaii, with his wife, when he was notified of the Trout Fire. "My wife was very, very patient with me. I was on the phone and texting and emailing and posting four or five hours a day through the whole thing. And as soon as I came back, Bruce was on the phone with me, letting me know what you guys were doing at your fire command meetings in the morning, and I would try to listen to what you guys were doing each time. What I love about it is that we saw the volunteer fire departments and all these agencies come together, and they worked beautifully together in unison. And you know, I want to thank Senator Ramos for being easy to work with for the county volunteer fire departments in need of funding for equipment. Together, we were able to get them $300,000 for equipment in the capital outlay process, and so we're glad that we're able to do that. And now, my friend Milo Lambert."

"I'm the Chief of the Silver City Fire Department," Lambert began. "Roger gave us a very good rundown of resources in the county. 206 firefighters. We have 25 to cover the town of Silver City. We're fully staffed and our department is 24/7, so there's always somebody manning those stations.

"I want to talk to you about becoming a fire-adapted community. We are a community that lives in very likely area for wildland fires. We can fight fire all day. We do, and we don't mind, but the best resource for us to deal with these fires is mitigation itself. It's the community that needs to take the steps to prevent the fire from starting in the first place. And if you want to do that, there are very easy steps you can take. We need to get the citizenry of this town, in this community, this county, the Tri-City area, on board. We can work on defensible space. It is very easy to work on defensible space around your home and business. It's easy to remove the brush, remove ladder fuels that keep fire from transmitting from a low grass, burning fire up into the tree tops. Take that route of travel away, create defensible space around your property. No ladder fuels, create separation, remove dead and downed trees. That's easy. Harden your homes. The combination of home hardening and defensible space will give you the greatest chance to survive a wildland fire . It will create wildfire resilience in all of these structures, both in the town and the county itself. And if you don't take the first steps as a community to protect yourself, then we will unfortunately be at your home, likely putting out the ashes. Home hardening is also easy. Everybody wants a yard, and everybody wants a fence. How about don't make that fence out of wood and tie it right into the side of your house? It creates a vessel of travel for that fire to transmit into your structure. That's an easy fix. Make sure your roof is of proper material. I'm not telling you you need to go replace your roof, but if you're going to, a metal roof is much less likely to burn than wood shake shingles. Get dual-pane windows. Everyone overlooks this dual paning. Tempered glass windows create a barrier to fire and heat transmission into your home and nobody pays any attention to it. Prepare an evacuation route we talked about Ready, Set, Go with Roger. That all sounds fantastic, until it's you that has to evacuate and you don't know your route. We saw this just last year. Identify your route. Prepare yourself a Go Bag. Keep your medications on hand. Know the steps you're going to take when you're leaving your home, close your doors, close your windows. We saw homes last year that evacuated that left the windows open. You're asking to have a burned-down home at that point. Close your doors, close your windows, make sure your garage doors are closed. Make sure the seals on those doors are hardened and intact. I'm not asking for armor plating, but if you make sure the weather stripping is intact, that will keep embers, which are the largest cause of wildland fire from entering your home. Embers from a wildland fire will travel miles ahead of the fire line. You can take very easy and simple steps to make sure that you have wildfire resilience in your home and property. If you don't have a good source for the material that I'm talking about, come to my office. I will give you copies of everything I have, stacks and stacks of material, videos, maps, whatever it is you need. I will be glad to provide that to you, because at the heart of all things, I'm kind of lazy, and if I can help you prevent fire, I'm good. So come to my office. It's at the Silver City annex 1203 North Hudson, on the second floor. If I'm not there, Deputy Chief Eloy Vasquez will be there. He has all of these materials, too. If you have questions about your home, we do home site visits. We've been getting a lot of calls for it lately. We'll go to your home. Give you some tips and pointers. We are not by any means the best resource for that as that comes from the Forest Service themselves, but we'd be glad to give you our opinion. So reach out, take precautionary steps, create defensible space, harden your home, develop an evacuation route, and prepare yourself."

The following speaker beginning Part 2 will be the Grant County Emergency Manager Scot Fuller.