Any cities in Southwest with low fire risk? (places to live, air quality)
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Thank you for the additional suggestions. The problem is, we've really grown to love the climate in the Southwest. My husband has some arthritis, so humidity is not so good for him. We might have to consider places with "low" fire risk (according to the internet), such as Las Vegas or Southern Utah? Does anyone have any opinion on those two options?
Higher fire risk than any of the desert cities. A lot more plant life. Where do you think the fires happen? It's certainly not where there's no trees and only cacti.
Don't live somewhere arid if you want low fire risk. So throw the whole West out of your consideration, except the rainy Pacific Northwest along the I-5 and west of there until the southern Oregon border. No Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona... none of them. No Bend or Spokane either.
And like other posters said, California burns enough to impact states east of them.
Besides if you're concerned with the air quality that comes with fire... the Southwest has the worst air quality in the whole country, from cars alone. You want to live somewhere humid with a breeze that will push all that away and dilute the pollution in the air with water. Places like Florida never have bad air quality.
Until five years ago....the largest fires in Oregon and Washington were ALL west of I-5.
Thank you everyone, for your suggestions. Sorry for the late reply, but I was not informed in my email that I had any replies, for some reason. Ruth, we love Santa Fe, but doesn't it have significant fire risk going forward? I read a report online that seemed to suggest this, and I know it has a lot of forests around it.
MG
Interesting. Do you have a source or url? There are fires most years in the Jemez Mountains (west and south of Santa Fe) but only rarely are they way out of hand...but it happens. They do controlled burns quite often-- usually a few hours with advance notice. If you go up into the mountains on forest roads the forest looks maintained with no ground litter -- so they are trying to reduce fire fuel. It looks like a park.
We are in a drought (again) so I worry about this summer. It seems El Nino years bring us rain...we have been in a La Nina pattern but that ended in early May and are entering a normal pattern right now. A normal monsoon would be good.
If smoke is a problem, what about dust? We get blowing dust at times. Not the opaque haboob dust storms that some places get but it can be a relentless haze over a few days. Most people do not have AC here but use swamp coolers with air flow out open windows but dust and pollen gets in. Sensitive people get AC installed.
SunGrins,
I looked at the report from CoreLogic (https://www.corelogic.com/blog/2019/...fire-risk.aspx). Although technically, Santa Fe's risk is lower than many Western cities, the report explains that the city is surrounded by higher risk areas.
Higher fire risk than any of the desert cities. A lot more plant life. Where do you think the fires happen? It's certainly not where there's no trees and only cacti.
Don't live somewhere arid if you want low fire risk. So throw the whole West out of your consideration, except the rainy Pacific Northwest along the I-5 and west of there until the southern Oregon border. No Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona... none of them. No Bend or Spokane either.
And like other posters said, California burns enough to impact states east of them.
Besides if you're concerned with the air quality that comes with fire... the Southwest has the worst air quality in the whole country, from cars alone. You want to live somewhere humid with a breeze that will push all that away and dilute the pollution in the air with water. Places like Florida never have bad air quality.
I suppose if someone was really concerned about reducing their risk of wildfires(or breathing in wildfire smoke, the rare times smoke from those fires get really bad) and living in the west, maybe look at the greater Salt Lake City metro? It doesn't seem like there are a lot of plants, in that desert area.
Also if you can stand how warm it gets, Tucson and/or Phoenix might work as well, or anywhere else in southern or central New Mexico(i.e. Las Cruces).
Or perhaps Las Vegas or Reno might work? Only bad thing, is that those places aren't far from the California border, where wildfire risks are a little higher. Maybe Vegas would be better, since I get the sense southern California is less forested than north California, and perhaps a little less chance of getting blowing wildfire smoke the times smoke from those fires get really bad.
I suppose if someone was really concerned about reducing their risk of wildfires(or breathing in wildfire smoke, the rare times smoke from those fires get really bad) and living in the west, maybe look at the greater Salt Lake City metro? It doesn't seem like there are a lot of plants, in that desert area.
Also if you can stand how warm it gets, Tucson and/or Phoenix might work as well, or anywhere else in southern or central New Mexico(i.e. Las Cruces).
Or perhaps Las Vegas or Reno might work? Only bad thing, is that those places aren't far from the California border, where wildfire risks are a little higher. Maybe Vegas would be better, since I get the sense southern California is less forested than north California, and perhaps a little less chance of getting blowing wildfire smoke the times smoke from those fires get really bad.
Generally people who care about smoke inhalation care about air quality as a whole. The West just isn't that, especially Salt Lake City who is infamous for valley inversions. Los Angeles and even Phoenix get really bad inversions too, probably just not as noticeably extreme as SLC. In fact when COVID first started a year ago people gawked at how little smog from LA's inversion that Southern California had.
California wildfires are pretty bad due to excessive and obscene overplanting of the eucalyptus tree (a non-native plant mind you), which by design is a fire burner more so than basically any other tree. Other parts of the West don't have this firebug of a tree around but that doesn't mean we have other environmental factors, like aridity, that encourage wildfires.
The two are at odds with each other, like jumbo shrimp. OP needs to choose which one of these things they truly value over the other. It's like wanting to live in Florida and avoiding hurricanes, you simply can't.
Thank you everyone, for your suggestions. Sorry for the late reply, but I was not informed in my email that I had any replies, for some reason. Ruth, we love Santa Fe, but doesn't it have significant fire risk going forward? I read a report online that seemed to suggest this, and I know it has a lot of forests around it.
MG
No, I haven't heard anything about this. Local authorities have spent years doing controlled burns in the watershed area, meaning--the forests around town, to reduce the fire risk. This is exactly the sort of thing municipalities and counties and the Forest Service in CA should have been doing for the last....50 years.
No, I haven't heard anything about this. Local authorities have spent years doing controlled burns in the watershed area, meaning--the forests around town, to reduce the fire risk. This is exactly the sort of thing municipalities and counties and the Forest Service in CA should have been doing for the last....50 years.
Correct.
As a professional forester during that time period……
You can blame the environmental folks and Senator Cantwell of Washington state.
Together they are to blame for millions of acres burned, ten of thousands of homes lost, and over a thousands lives.
Higher fire risk than any of the desert cities. A lot more plant life. Where do you think the fires happen? It's certainly not where there's no trees and only cacti.
Don't live somewhere arid if you want low fire risk. So throw the whole West out of your consideration, except the rainy Pacific Northwest along the I-5 and west of there until the southern Oregon border. No Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona... none of them. No Bend or Spokane either.
And like other posters said, California burns enough to impact states east of them.
Besides if you're concerned with the air quality that comes with fire... the Southwest has the worst air quality in the whole country, from cars alone. You want to live somewhere humid with a breeze that will push all that away and dilute the pollution in the air with water. Places like Florida never have bad air quality.
Actually we do have some bad air here in Florida and we do get brush fires. i live near the Ocala National Forest. This area is completely forest covered, other than where developers are cutting all the forest down. We have had several fires the last few weeks, because we have had little to no rain for a number of months. There was bad air mixed in with all the pollen down here, that makes it hard for sensitive people to breathe properly. We also have controlled burns which I find annoying from all the smoke. Combine all this with the ever growing population and all the vehicle and that exhaust. Id hardly call this a clean air state anymore. Maybe if one lives on the beach but inland the air is definitely getting dirtier by the year.
My suggestion is to escape fires the desert is probably the better option.
Actually we do have some bad air here in Florida and we do get brush fires. i live near the Ocala National Forest. This area is completely forest covered, other than where developers are cutting all the forest down. We have had several fires the last few weeks, because we have had little to no rain for a number of months. There was bad air mixed in with all the pollen down here, that makes it hard for sensitive people to breathe properly. We also have controlled burns which I find annoying from all the smoke. Combine all this with the ever growing population and all the vehicle and that exhaust. Id hardly call this a clean air state anymore. Maybe if one lives on the beach but inland the air is definitely getting dirtier by the year.
My suggestion is to escape fires the desert is probably the better option.
The desert cities are not that safe. As someone else stated, even ABQ still suffered from the California wildfires and a year or two ago the wildfires on Mount Lemmon made Tucson hazardous for a couple weeks. OP has no business living out here if it's this much of a concern. Just because you likely won't lose your house in a wildfire in the desert because there's no plants doesn't mean there isn't a mountain an hour away that will get a bad wildfire and send the smoke your way that your lungs will pay the price for. The Southwest is full of sky islands where these wildfires happen often, and the formation of these sky islands create a bunch of valleys almost all of which have the cities in them that trap the smoke/smog/air pollution, only expontentially increasing the issue. Out east where there's little mountains and more humidity means there's no booster on the air quality problems making it significantly better.
As I stated before, it's like asking to live in Florida and have no hurricane risk. If you are that concerned with hurricanes, don't live in Florida. Likewise, if you are that concerned with wildfires to the point you need to join a forum to ask, don't live out West.
If it's this much of a problem I would recommend not even looking out west at all and look at the Great Plains, no significant forest, slightly more humidity and no valleys to trap in pollution. A rural area too. Phoenix last year had a bunch of wildfires in its suburb of Cave Creek that took a couple weeks to control. So again... not even Phoenix is safe, our suburbs can even get them.
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