By Stephani Dingreville
Corrales is a wild land.
Most communities fit into one of three categories, urban, suburban or rural. However, a new classification is being used ever-increasingly to describe some areas, Corrales among them: WUI.
Pronounced “wooey,” WUI stands for Wildland-Urban Interface. This is where the border of urban development overlaps with an area that has continuous vegetation, called a “wildland”. WUI is that bit of space that is not quite urban, and not quite wild, but a unique, some would say magical, combination of the two.
Overpopulation has added to the amount of land designated as WUI, as housing developers move farther and farther away from urban centers. The pandemic has also driven more people away from populated urban areas to places that offer a bit more room to spread out.
Unfortunately, all the wonderful benefits of living in an untamed, wild space come at a dangerous cost. Namely, the risk of damaging wildfires increases exponentially in a WUI. This has pushed these areas into the spotlight in the last few years, with wildfire incidence on the rise.
The United States Environment Protection Agency (EPA) lists wildfires as one of their climate change indicators. And it is easy to find many statistics supporting this link. The data shows that over the last 30 years, fires have not only increased in size and frequency, but also in the amount of damage they have done to property. This is where WUI lands really come into discussion.
When responding to the buzz around WUI, Corrales Fire Chief Anthony Martinez surmises: “We are living it!” And indeed, a map of the US drawn in 2010 by the Silvas Lab of the University of Wisconsin-Madison classified Corrales almost exclusively as WUI.
Fire fighters face bigger challenges in WUI areas. Many of these areas are further away from fire stations, and the travel time adds to the increased danger. The Corrales Fire Department has an incredibly quick response time for all village fires, but deals with other WUI setbacks.
For one thing, Corrales has many areas that are not covered by a fire hydrant line. This necessitates the transportation of water from a source to the site of a fire. Urban centers typically have city water and fire hydrant lines within reach of all citizens. But this is usually not the case in a WUI.