When the Marshall fire burned through a record number of homes and businesses in Boulder County last week, Richard Skorman’s mind jumped to the Ivywild and Broadmoor neighborhoods and the rest of southwest Colorado Springs.
The recently retired City Council president calls the southwest side home and, alongside many others, considers the massive swathe of land at risk for another devastating wildfire.
Should a blaze spark on the southwest side during a high-wind day, there are only a few two-lane roads leading in and out of the neighborhoods there, Skorman noted.
“All bets are off,” he said.
Skorman, fire mitigation experts and emergency management officials said the Marshall fire, which sparked Dec. 30, serves as a stark reminder that not only are Colorado’s foothill- and mountain-adjacent communities at risk for wildfires but so too are its more urban neighborhoods. And many communities across the state are unprepared or underprepared.
More than 20% of the state’s counties with at least a fifth of their populations living in the wildland-urban interface (WUI for short) have no wildfire policies in their major planning documents, according to a 2021 analysis from the Littleton-based Community Wildfire Planning Center. Another 14% of those counties have only limited policies.
Less than a third of those counties “meaningfully incorporated” wildfire policies into their broad plans, the analysis continues. But even then, many of those plans – which often detail evacuation routes, ways to combat fires and outline recovery efforts – are over a decade old.
The wildfire mitigation plan for the area engulfed in the Marshall fire hadn’t been updated since 2010.
How prepared a Front Range community is for a wildfire depends on where it is, Molly Mowery, executive director of CWPC, said. And that leaves many people, homes and businesses needlessly exposed. Often, communities with the most up-to-date plans are those who have already suffered from wildfires rather than those who have yet to experience the devastation firsthand.
The Marshall fire is a tragedy, Mowery said.
“But if we don’t learn from it, it’ll be a double tragedy,” she said.
Strong winds blow snow past a burned car that was abandoned on a hilltop during in the Marshall Fire in Superior on Jan. 4, 2022.
Where is Colorado’s wildfire risk now?
Skorman estimated Colorado Springs has perhaps 50,000 addresses housing some 125,000 people within its wildland-urban interface and said the notion of evacuating each of them during a fire would be a daunting task.
“Every time I smell smoke…” he paused. “I can’t stop worrying about it.”
But the risk isn’t limited to the WUI anymore, Andrew Rumbach, a former professor at the University of Colorado Denver said. Climate change mixed with Colorado’s ongoing population and development book has expanded the risk further away from the mountains and foothills than many residents and officials might realize.
An aerial photo of the neighborhoods near Harper Lake in Louisville show the destruction left behind from the Marshall Fire on Jan. 2, 2022.
Rumbach, who now teaches about natural hazard mitigation at Texas A&M University, pointed to the state’s wildfire risk map, which highlights more extreme risk in varying shades of red and orange. Much of the Western Slope, southwest Colorado and Front Range foothills are at higher risk, the map shows. But so too are more urban grasslands like those in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, near the Aurora Reservoir and northeast of Firestone.
That change is part of the evolution of preventing and fighting wildfires in the modern era, Kevin Michalak, fire management officer for Jefferson County, said. Some of the most concern sits in the Front Range’s lower elevations and grasslands.
“If you get what we saw with the Marshall fire it can move very, very fast,” Michalak said. “And most people don’t identify a wildland fire with the grasslands.”
Developments along state highways 93 and 470 are of particular concern, Michalak said. Same with those off State Highway 72.
“And anywhere south of Golden where those areas open up,” he said. “You get winds like we had and it could jump pretty easily to any tight group of houses right next to big open space areas.”
Rumbach added that the foothills around Boulder remain an “extremely high risk.”
The state isn’t prepared for more wildfires, said Democratic state Rep. Marc Snyder of Manitou Springs. He was mayor of the small town immediately west of Colorado Springs during the Waldo Canyon Fire and during the floods that followed the next year.
“We only had one way in and out of town,” Snyder said. “That’s scarier than you can think.”
Since then the small city just west of Colorado Springs has taken a more proactive approach to its wildfire planning and evacuation processes, Snyder said. But other communities haven’t always followed suit.
Michalak expressed a bit more optimism in wildfire plans across the Front Range. He pointed to the Marshall fire’s low death toll — currently, two people are missing and no other deaths have been reported — as evidence.
Volunteer firefighter Jim Siewertsen, from North Fork Fire Protection District, works on putting out hot spots on burned townhomes on Jan. 1, 2022, in Superior.
Incorporating fire planning in everyday life
Rigid planning can only take a city or county so far, Michalak added. And evacuation routes are difficult to plan because they depend so much on the conditions on the ground. Stressing one route too heavily could put residents at risk if a fire breaks one way instead of another.
Instead, just as emergency officials must plan for disasters, residents must as well, Michalak said.
“We’re in an area that does catch fire,” he said. “People need to be cognizant of where they’re living, evacuation routes and know what to take with them and what to do in case something does happen.”
On a personal level, homeowners can clear trees, shrubs and grasses that might catch fire, Michalak said. They can also upgrade their roofing and siding to become more flame resistant.
After the Waldo Canyon Fire, Colorado Springs updated building codes to ban wood siding and decking, among other things, for homes in at-risk areas to avoid more fires. But that update wasn’t retroactive and Skorman noted that many of the city’s older homes are still built closely together with more flammable materials and in an area surrounded by wildfire fuels.
Colorado state building codes don’t do enough to address wildfire risk
Cities and counties shouldn’t wait until after they suffer a wildfire to make those changes, Mowery, of the Community Wildfire Planning Center, said. She noted that there are no statewide building and fire codes to address many of the risks.
Snyder added that he might propose legislation this year that would require governments to update their fire mitigation plans every five years.
But Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt, a former state representative, said most cities would likely bristle at such a hard requirement. And because Colorado’s a home-rule state, they might be able to fight one.
Rather, Arndt said Synder might be better off if he instead proposed a broader framework that would instead offer some state funding and expertise to governments that want to update their plans.
Mowery had a similar suggestion for statewide building and fire codes, saying state officials could at least provide a model for local governments to adopt or make their own.
But public interest in broad and proactive changes wanes quickly after natural disasters, Mowery said. And public officials should work now to update and improve their plans.
They should also communicate the ongoing risks to Coloradans up and down the Front Range, Mowery said. Because without that component, there might not be much of a local will to make a change.
This content was originally published here.
