Ruidoso's Fire Department

The Ruidoso Fire Department has 25 full-time and 3 volunteer firefighters to support a population of over 9,000 people. All firefighters are crosstrained in both structure and wildland fire techniques and have completed 130-190, Basic Wildland Training. This requirement began in the late 1980's. About 50% of Ruidoso's firefighting force has completed Advanced Wildland Training.

Education efforts

With 43% of Ruidoso's homes seasonally occupied, a major challenge is how to increase public awareness of part-time residents or vacationers about the wildfire risk. In 1999, Ruidoso received a Project Impact Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant of $300,000 for wildfire education and emergency management. The grant has been used to pay for a variety of traditional and nontraditional outreach activities that focus on emergency evacuation and education. All the education and outreach efforts are linked to the Village Emergency Management.

To facilitate alert/warning notifications, Ruidoso purchased "The Communicator", which is a reverse 911 dialing computer system designed to notify residents about an impending emergency. The operator can identify a geographic area and the system will call up to 500 residences in that vicinity within 10 minutes. Emergency Management used the system for the first time during the Kokopelli Fire, along with local radio stations, to alert the community of the evacuation. According to Emergency Management, "The Communicator" worked well, but one property owner living near the Kokopelli fire said neither he nor his neighbors received an evacuation call.

Ruidoso's nontraditional activities include working at a grassroots level to reach nonresident homeowners. For Instance, the Public Information Officer has created an event driven strategy to reach people outside their homes. A Department of Interior grant for $14,000 will fund the creation of a program that is mobile and easily moved to various events, such as the race track, museums and cook offs. Further, Ruidoso started a Neighborhood Fire Smart program in January 2003 which is modeled after the national Neighborhood Watch crime prevention program. Neighborhood Fire Smart identifies block captains and other interested parties to coordinate with neighbors and is designed as a one-on-one outreach intervention at the grassroots level. The program builds capacity for an entire neighborhood to work on wildfire responses.

In the Kokopelli Fire, of the 28 houses burned, only 7 were owned by full time residents. The challenge for Ruidoso officials is how to notify part-time residents about evacuation routes, especially in hard to reach neighborhoods. Ruidoso used several approaches to deal with the challenge. All routes out of canyon neighborhoods were identified by evacuation signs located at key intersections and roads. A tri-fold brochure that contained evacuation procedures was designed and sent to every resident through their electric bill in 2002. Ruidoso will repeat this exercise in 2003. Also, Village Emergency Management made a video of public service announcements about evacuation and fire awareness. The video ran on local television stations during the summer of 2002. Other efforts include FIREWISE workshops held in March 2001, April 2001, and April 2002.