Front Range takes lessons from recent fires

By Jericho Parms

October 29, 4:30 am. As the winds picked up and the sky became a fog of orange smoke, flames up to 100 feet tall jumped from treetop to treetop, as the Overland fire exploded taking hold of thousands of acres southwest of Boulder.

“It was a veil of thick orange air, and it covered everything,” said Kathy Mills, who among other residents of Boulder County was forced to evacuate her home. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and honestly I hope I never do again.”

Simultaneously, firefighters continued to battle thirteen large wind driven fires in Southern California. Over 40,000 residents were forced to evacuate, and nearly 1,000 structures were destroyed.

“We were slated to go down there, see what we could do to help,” said Tyler Lambert, Station Captain at the Northeast Teller Fire District. Firefighters from surrounding states were sent to California to help local forces control the devastating blasts. A group from Colorado Springs was to be among those sent too, yet due to the lack of funding to send a full truck down there, Lambert and his crew remained in Colorado. “Turned out, we had our own story coming, right up in Boulder.”

The Overland fire in Boulder county, was accompanied by the Cherokee Ranch fire, which erupted the same time in Douglas county. The fires blackened nearly 4,700 acres, burned 11 homes and torched several buildings.

“The strength of the fire is amazing, and its ability to destroy is terrifying,” said Mills. “I just can’t fathom how it all happens.”

The nation has its eye turned towards the West as each year images of fire seem to increase and stories are added to the archive of what has become the way of the western landscape. Yet has nothing been learned?

While signs point to arson in Southern California, the ability for fire to spread and cause significant damage is common to the region as a whole. The blazes, which exploded early on October 29 near Boulder, were the result of a downed power line falling and sparking against trees. The dry windy conditions forced thousands to flee as the flames sped through the area.

Yet the hand of nature also helped tame the fierce flames when light snow and a significant drop in temperature helped firefighters contain the situation within two days.

“Just as quickly as the weather changed from yesterday to today, a week from now we could be in that same situation,” said Governor Bill Owens, at a press conference after the fires had been contained. He reminded residents that Colorado, like much of the , can fall victim to its hazardous environment at any moment.

Perhaps last year’s devastating fire season has served as the biggest lesson to many in Colorado. Last year alone, over 1/2 million acres and over 380 homes were burned.

The Hayman fire ignited on June 8, southwest of Denver and just north of Lake George, eventually effecting parts of Park, Jefferson, Douglas and Teller counties.

U.S. Forest Service employee, Terry Lynn Barton, allegedly set the fire, and before the flames were controlled ten days later, it had burned through almost 140,000 acres and destroyed 600 structures.

“It certainly has brought a lot to our attention in terms of what wildfires can really do,” said Lambert. “Consciously people have kept that in the back of their minds, especially the ones that know they are at risk.”

Indeed people may have learned from Colorado’s past. Homeowners affected by the Overland fire fled their homes quickly on October 29, and fire crews attacked the flames hard and early in order to protect lives and property that are always at stake.

According to Lambert, we are learning from California as well. “Of course we are aware of the potential for a similar situation arising in Colorado. Mitigation work is what we try to focus on teaching people. If someone takes care of their property in terms of keeping clear defensive space, that makes our job easier.”

“Defensible space,” a term coined in the 1980s, refers to vegetation management practices designed to reduce the threat of wildfires to homes. According to FireWise, a website developed by the Colorado Springs Fire Department, defensible space specifically refers to the area between a house and an oncoming wildfire.

Within this space, vegetation must be modified to reduce the threat of destruction and provide opportunity for firefighters to adequately do their job of defending the house.

However, others suggest the lessons have gone unheeded.

“We are all human beings,” said Colorado Springs Fire Chief Manuel Navarro. “When we feel threatened we act, we do things to ensure our sense of safety. However, when the threat passes people do not want to react to things. It is a great cycle.”

That’s why the Colorado Springs fire department created the FireWise program, to educate property owners about ways to protect their homes from wildfires (see sidebar).

Firefighters say there are important roles to play by both the fire department and landowners.

“In many ways these events are our own fault; we can’t get information out to the entire public body that we serve,” said Lambert. “There is some responsibility on the part of the people as well. Contact us, ask us what you can be doing to assure you own safety.”

Wildfires are fought by a diverse group of firefighters and support groups from local, state and federal agencies, all of whom have the goal of mitigating unwanted fire and provide public safety. All of these professionals have accepted a profession with high risk involved. “The first part is training – but you can only train so much,” said Chief Navarro. “The other part, the hard part, is experience. You need old guys like me out there.”

There are two main classifications of firefighters. The wild land fighters go in on the fringes and try to control the fire. The suburban firefighters, like most in the CSFD, fight fire defensively, primarily focusing on securing homes and ensuring safety.

“Trying to stop a raging wildfire – even with the array of available technological resources – is like trying to stop a tornado,” according to the Colorado Emergency Management website. The job is immense and requires the utmost amount of cooperation and coordination among forces.

Ecosystem of Fire

Colorado residents live in an ecosystem where fire is bound to occur. Many of the effects of fire are believed to be necessary and natural for the well being of the environment. In Colorado, the area where wild lands are prone to fire and expanding mountain suburbs are considered the red zone. This is also referred to as the wildland or urban interface.

Examples of the presence of fire can be found throughout the natural environment of Colorado in a variety of species. The ponderosa pine plays a remarkable role in forest fires throughout the West.

Its thick skin serves as insulation, and can withstand heat and scorching without experiencing damage to the mature tree. The lodge pole pine, a fully fire adapted species, has pinecones that will not open and spread their seed until touched by fire. The aspen of Colorado, are largely the result of fires that cleared the high country, allowing new growth to rise from the ashes.

Much conflict and controversy surrounds this environment and the occurrence of fire. While many content that fires must be suppressed at all cost, others suggest that it is necessary to allow burning to occur.

“Fire is every bit as essential to the health of the ecosystem as water,” writes Owen Perkins in an article about the Hayman fire that appeared in Boulder Weekly last year. “And its suppression is akin to removing the rivers from the watershed.”

Yet others insist on suppression. The increasing inclination towards building houses deep within the forests, means more forest fires need to be suppressed.

“It is a reality that we must face,” said Navarro on the increasing demand for defensive firefighting. “You have to assume some risk. People are going to live where they want, and people want to live in these wildland areas.”

Perhaps the acknowledgement of the need to thin the forests of underbrush and fast-burning kindling, similar to that which led to the spread of the Hayman fire, is the closest to a common understanding that there is at the moment. The questions and conflicts only suggest that perhaps there is no clearly agreed upon lesson to be learned from the past in the first place.

“As a society,” says conservationist and writer Bill deBuys, in an article by Perkins, “we still haven’t figured out how to live in this place.”