Eric Hanson wrote:Brian,
Sounds awful! Do you have any resources left on the land? In my head I am picturing 240 acres (at least. I guess really it would be thousands of acres) of blackened land with a few scorched trunks standing plus a few trees that might optimistically make it. I assume you don't want to touch those still-standing trees with needles (just how many survived--just asking out of curiosity). Are any of the burned and dead ones any good for lumber or wood chips or anything? I don't live in fire country, so I am just not familiar with what is left when these acres burn. As I said, I imagine a scorched wasteland. So sorry to hear about it.
Eric
Thank you for your comments Eric
Yes we have the best timber in this county. I've visited many properties in San Miguel and Mora counties during my time as rural and mountain WiFi installer and tower tech. As stewards of this land since 1971 we created a highly manicured forest park, enjoyed by hundreds of friends who've repeatedly attended our memorial Day 4 day camp out during its fifty year run.
I've calculated that myself, my father, brother and son have 45 minutes of attending to each and every tree on this property. This has been certified by the expert witness Arborist who recently spent a full day with me as we hiked our property documenting the condition of the property prior to the fire. He said he saw no evidence of dead and downed trees anywhere in our forest.
Unlike all the neighboring which hadn't had any forest stewards with similar age 90 year old Ponderosa Pine trees over there were forty feet at most, ours were 60 plus foot tall gorgeous specimens. I have not counted the trees affected by the fire. However the arborist has. He said the timber was worth a million dollars and I was correct to add 45 hours of work at $35.00 an hour to create such a beautiful forest.
I've recently attended a town hall meeting where FEMA and the Forest Dis-Service spoke, as you can imagine FEMA spokesperson continually lied trying to get peoples hopes up that they were going to make us whole. Currently FEMA is encouraging people to leave their attorneys and take what they offered, instead of holding them fully accountable.
I contained myself through the FEMA BS waiting to see what the new chief of Mora and San Miguel counties was going to say. It was more insane than I could have ever imagined; He told an audience of around 75 people who lost everything like us that his plan would help seven people! He had told Those 7 were ranchers who leased public land for grazing cows, that there were too many fences were down in the high country down to safely run cattle, but his plan would solve that problem by
creating virtual fences. The forest idiots have contacted those seven lucky ranchers letting them know that all they had to do was train their cows in the use of... wait for it...
shock collars. I had had enough of this nonsense and stood up and interrupted when he started into his next plan to cut all the trees on all the roads righaways, "
Excuse me, but your credibility is at an all time low now and can you tell us what criterion you used in lighting that fire?" After turning beet red and bowing his head for a moment he said, "I Don't know." adding the same BS they used to start the Cero Grande fire the destroyed the town of Los Alamo, "it was going to burn with one lightning strike..." I interrupted again and let him know that our trees have been struck by lightning many times yet started no forest fires. That shut him down completely. I walked out to the sounds of many people asking similar questions. I was interviewed in the hallway away from the six uniformed state police about what happened. One person I did not recognize, but my son in law did was Brian Colon former NM state auditor now working for our attorneys. He said I was wonderfully civilized and asked a question everybody wanted an answer to.
