Where there’s smoke, there’s a need for answers about fire – and this is Wildfire Awareness Week!
Many of you will know key wildfire resources already, and some of you may have some we’ve missed. Here’s our list at the State Library:
If you only have time to check one website, it should be NM Fire Information, “an interagency effort by federal and state agencies in New Mexico to provide timely, accurate fire and restriction information for the entire state” at
On the front page you’ll see links and blog entries related to current fires. Don’t stop there! The menu seems simple, but there are hidden treasures you find only by clicking on everything in sight. Be sure to look at the links page, which oddly enough has links back inside the main site. Here are some key pages that will give you an idea of what’s buried deeper:
http://nmfireinfo.com/information/wildfire/
Now, here’s what the thing about looking everywhere on this site. The page title says” wildfire” but it links to many other things as well, like info on becoming a firefighter and the extremely cool page Cultural Interpretations of Fire (which is part of the NPS Learning Center mentioned later in this article).
http://nmfireinfo.com/links/fire-education/
Smoke Management (including valuable health tips):
http://nmfireinfo.com/smoke-management/
Often NM Fire Information links to more detailed reports or maps at InciWeb, the Incident Information System site. Here’s the New Mexico page:
http://www.inciweb.org/state/32/
InciWeb has a very helpful dictionary of terminology here:
http://www.inciweb.org/terminology/
and offers useful links here:
http://www.inciweb.org/links/
New Mexico falls under the Southwest Coordination Center of the National Interagency Coordination Center:
Their Predictive Services pages (choose from the menu on the left; they include Intelligence, Weather, Fuels/Fire Danger, and Outlooks) link to very rich data sources.
Broadening to the national level, the National Interagency Coordination Center has a national page on Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisories:
http://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/fuels_fire-danger/fuels_fire-danger.htm
and you can also see a pdf of their current situation report to see how New Mexico is faring in comparison with the rest of the country:
http://www.nifc.gov/nicc/sitreprt.pdf
If your interest is more in description and explanation rather than current situations or data, try the National Park Service’s Fire and Aviation Management site, which has a large section on Wildland Fire:
http://www.nps.gov/fire/wildland-fire/about.cfm
as well as a Learning Center
http://www.nps.gov/fire/wildland-fire/learning-center.cfm
with helpful information for adults and special pages for kids and educators.
Kids might also want to visit the Weather Wiz Kids Wildfire page:
http://www.weatherwizkids.com/weather-wildfire.htm
or Smokey’s Kids from the US Forest Service:
http://www.smokeybear.com/kids/default.asp?js=1
(photo from NM Fire Info’s Facebook page)