How to deal with wildfire? Policy slow to evolve

'Spending more, managing less'
Shifting gears can't happen soon enough, according to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. He said wildfires have charred some 58 million acres — or 90,000 square miles — across the nation in the past seven years.

"We are spending more, managing less, burning more and as a result, having to cut funds to other important resource programs such as recreation, fisheries and wildlife to battle these wildfires," Domenici said.

In the Manzanos and elsewhere, decades of mismanagement have resulted in overgrown forests that make reintroducing fire a difficult task, said Arlene Perea, a fire information officer with the Mountainair Ranger District.

The district has used prescribed fire and mechanical thinning, but Perea said wildfires can't be allowed to burn to clean out the forest because of the homes scattered throughout the area.

The condition of the Manzanos and inclement weather at the time of the three fires kept forest officials from doing much more than watch the flames eat up some 26,000 acres — or 40 square miles — and more than five dozen homes, Bird said.

He said some of the charred areas had been treated previously to reduce the fire risk, but the flames still burned through.

"It's the same scenarios we had with people living in the Mississippi River flood plain," he said. "If people are going to live in there, how do we plan for that and prepare for that?"

Bird said local governments should adopt building codes and zoning rules to help mitigate some of the danger. However, he said, homeowners also need to take responsibility.

Davis said he would not have done anything differently to prepare for the fire. Some of his neighbors cleared a swath of land around their homes and they still burned, while others did nothing and escaped the flames, he said.

"If I build again here, if I build again in a deep forest, I won't clear a tree again either," he said. "Fire's a risk and it just happened to hit."

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