PART 3: Las Conchas wildfire burning out of control in New Mexico
Across the nation, nearly 5 million acres have been burned by fire this year, more than twice the 10-year average, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. As well as central snd northern New Mexico, areas of Texas and Arizona have been in flames. And the summer's monsoon rains in the Southwest are yet to come.
Money spent in suppressing a fire (wages, transportation, equipment, services, supplies, evacuations, and post-fire costs) is the expense most commonly reported by the media, to the exclusion of other important costs and losses. It's bt the tip of the fiery iceberg.
These firefighting expenses are the ones usually listed in official Forest Service tallies. Often, firefighting costs are under-reported. They escalate rapidly over time. In the past decade, they have passed the value of acreage lost for the first time. Suppression costs are only a small fraction of overall wildfire impacts, which may be 10 to 50 times higher--or more.
The actual price of a wildfire involves a slew of negative consequences: capital and property losses, environmental impacts, water losses (including long-term changes in water yield and watershed ability to collect and store water), air pollution, soil erosion, effects on public health, and loss of scenic, recreation, and human heritage features. Combustible vegetation in the Los Alamos area includes grasses, sagebrush, pinyon, juniper, aspen, spruce, and Ponderosa pine.
Atmospheric effects of smoke on possible climate change have not yet been thoroughly addressed in the literature of wildfire. The 1.34 million acres that burned in California wildfires in 2008 generated carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to approximately 13 million cars, each driven all year. The damage or destruction of current plants and transmission lines and future energy loss have tremendous present and future implications.
Summer is the rainy season in New Mexico. It is characterized by sudden afternoon or evening thunderstorms. Severe erosion is likely from the rush of water on the sloping mountainsides. Very small streams, arroyos, gullies, culverts, dry streambeds, and low-lying ground that appear harmless in dry weather can cause substantial floods in the summer rains, which continue into the September or October.
According to ( the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), severe storms and flooding have meant major disaster declarations for 7 of the past 20 years in New Mexico. Rain runoff from the scarred land will be a threat to homes and habitats in the burned area for several years. And next year, because of the Las Conchas fire, the deforested area will face a major flooding risk if a heavy spring melt occurs in the Jemez mountains. Early May usually marks the end of 4" snowfalls in Los Alamos, and then the floods come.
"The need to follow costs into subsequent years [can] more completely identify a fire’s true impact,” said Professor Dennis Lynch of Colorado State University. The cost of this water damage in terms of environmental degradation and human suffering is immense. Again, the wildfire suppression calculations may not take this important consequence into account.
The largest wildfire in Colorado history, arsonist-started Hayman Fire southwest of Denver, cost $42,279,000 ($307/acre) to suppress almost 10 years ago. Lynch estimated that losses of an additional $1,358/acre had accrued within a year.
We can expect no better numbers for the blaze in New Mexico.
Also of interest:
- Raw images by Los Alamos National Lab
- Incredible photojournalism of the wildfire and its effects
- video from Albuquerque
- video from Santa Fe
- video from Madrid
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