Is Santa Fe prepared for fire to wipe out watershed?

For the last few weeks, the Santa Fe River has been bubbling swiftly through, making this feel like an authentic mountain town. Born in a watershed a few miles east of downtown, our beautiful little river comes from hundreds of springs in a big forest above us.

Now imagine our Santa Fe River raging through town, almost the size of the Rio Grande. Imagine full-sized trees rocking along in muddy water with 6-foot standing waves. Imagine water flooding over all the bridges in town, flooding east-side homes and businesses downtown. Imagine hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and perhaps some deaths. Imagine a federal and state disaster area; businesses closed, tourism wrecked, infrastructure ruined.

Sound far-fetched? In August 2011, a big rainstorm pounded the burn scar from the Las Conchas Fire in the Jemez Mountains. The fire had been so hot it in places it vaporized tens of thousands of acres of forest, leaving bare ashen land over the Cochiti Creek watershed. A significant summer rain quickly ran off the burned ground and gathered into a river nearly the size of the Rio Grande, devastating the Dixon Apple Orchard and all its buildings.

The same thing happened for the same reason in Frijoles Canyon in Bandelier National Monument in 2013. The usually tiny Rito de los Frijoles raged wide and dirty, with thousands of whole trees rushing downstream, washing out bridges, wrapping picnic tables around trees and leaving massive piles of debris for miles down the canyon.

Santa Clara Pueblo experienced the same thing when Santa Clara Creek turned into a muddy rage after the Las Conchas Fire. The Pueblo wisely had prepared.

Post-fire flooding can and will happen to Santa Fe if we get a large, high-severity fire burning the Santa Fe watershed. It is not a question of if but when. The forests of the Santa Fe watershed haven’t had a natural low-intensity fire for a century. Flammable thickets and dead vegetation clog these forests. Before 1885, the watershed burned mildly about every 10 years.

North and east of Santa Fe, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest have burned in multiple recent large fires that killed forests over vast areas. The Pacheco Fire, the Borrego Fire, the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the Spring Fire, and the Tres Lagunas Fire — all changed forests into open ground because of dryness, climate change, and accumulations of vegetation and debris caused by decades of misguided fire suppression. By chance, fires have spared the Santa Fe watershed, but our luck will run out. The U.S. Forest Service proposes to thin out small trees and burn the watershed at low intensity to prepare for inevitable wildfires. (They could have treated the land 30 years ago, but better late than never.) If a big wildfire comes before they finish their fuel treatments, the post-fire flooding will be a dark event in our city’s history.

Meanwhile, the Forest Service finds itself in an endless argument with various members of the public, many of whom believe that we should leave nature alone, ignoring the ecological damages we’ve caused over the last century. Some people don’t like smoke. Lawsuits and years of delay? Some people have reasonable input, but talking must give way to action soon!

Before Los Alamos burned in 2000, many residents told the Forest Service not to cut trees near town. Thickets were pretty to them. As a result, the Cerro Grande Fire quickly burned into neighborhoods and cost a billion dollars in damage and other losses.

Is Santa Fe ready for an inevitable wildfire in our watershed?

Tom Ribe is a retired wildland firefighter, park ranger and public lands advocate based in Santa Fe.