Compound interest in banks is fun. Compound disasters in our surroundings, not so much.

Consider wildfires, as the town of Henniker is currently doing.

We haven’t thought much about wildfires in New Hampshire for 125 years, since the White Mountains stopped being ignited by cinders from logging trains. But climate change is bringing wildfires back with a vengeance through unrelated problems that worsen each other.

The hotter summers, flash droughts, lower snowpack and shifting wind patterns of climate change make big fires more frequent and harder to fight. At the same time, climate change helps new diseases and invasive plants and bugs thrive, killing trees and turning them into kindling that feeds any blaze. Compounded disaster.

“In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in 2023 there were unprecedented fires… Acadian forests in coastal provinces usually do not burn. The fact that they could burn means it could very easily happen here,” said John Neely, community wildfire mitigation specialist with the state Department of Forest and Lands. Neely is working with Henniker as it develops a wildfire mitigation plan.

The process began, says Henniker Fire Chief Jim Morse, when the town looked to install a dry hydrant — basically a big straw that lets fire engines suck water out of a pond when fighting a brush fire — and decided that they needed to look at the problem of wildfires more broadly.

“We’ve had a couple of big ones… and we’re trying to put something in place to at least be better prepared for it,” he said. “We’ve gotten lucky in the state. Some of the fires we’ve had, they could have been a whole bunch worse. If you get the upper hand of things before they start, it’s always an advantage.”

The plan will bring together all the land owners, which is a mixed bag since Henniker has town-owned properties, a state forest, Army Corps of Engineers land and properties owned by conservation groups, like the Forest Society, as well as everything owned privately.

The plan also includes an online “wildlife preparedness survey” that homeowners can fill out, linked from the home page of the town website at www.henniker.org. Survey questions range from basic — like, “Are you on a paved road?” and, “Do you have vegetation close to the house?” — to wide ranging — like, “Do you have an emergency evacuation plan?” and, “Do you know the local evacuation route?” Answers will be used in public sessions as the plan is drawn up.

Depending on what they find and what funding they can get, there are various possible actions they could take, from creating maps that can better predict wildfire danger to digging fire ponds as new water sources for crews, thinning woodlands or using prescribed burns to reduce what is called the “fuel load.”

“Say there’s a subdivision next to a pine stand with lots of blowdowns, diseased trees, making a lot of heavy fuels that could support a really problematic fire,” Neely said. “They could go in and remove that buildup of fuel or create a buffer, a shaded-fuel break 50 or 100 feet wide, something that’s going to change a fire’s behavior and make it more controllable.”

Neely, who has long been one of the state’s gurus when it comes to wildfire preparation, says a number of communities are undergoing a process similar to Henniker because of rising concern. He is working with three right now.

“More and more I hear from fire chiefs, town planners, selectmen. Wildfire is becoming something people are thinking about,” he said. “We’re not California, we don’t not have the same type of risks, but we are seeing changes. We should prepare for them.”

As for Chief Morse, his experience with past wildfires gives him every incentive to head them off at the pass, so to speak.

“We had one on Shaker Hill a few years back, it actually took about a full month to put it out. I had to climb the hill every day, stamp out fires that stayed in the black zone,” he said.