Q&A: Wildfire doesn’t know boundaries. Experts say mitigation shouldn't either.
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DURANGO, Colo. — The Durango fire district covers 325 square miles and includes 16 fire rescue stations.
With fire season approaching, Rocky Mountain PBS spoke with Scott Nielsen, Wildfire Battalion Chief of Durango Fire & Rescue, to learn more about how residents can prepare themselves and what effort the fire department is making.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Rocky Mountain PBS: How high is the fire risk in this region and what factors are contributing to it.
Scott Nielsen: Right now we're seeing the fire danger creeping up based on a lack of snowpack, lower precipitation and windy days this time of year. Historically, the end of May and 1st of June is when we hit some of our highest fire danger.
We've had a dry winter and the last two summers before this have been pretty good monsoons. So there's a lot of grass growing and there's just a lot of fuel that's available for fire to travel through the summer.
We've had a dry winter and the last two summers before this have been pretty good monsoons. So there's a lot of grass growing and there's just a lot of fuel that's available for fire to travel through the summer.
RMPBS: What are the most common causes of wildfires or house fires locally?
SN: So locally, there's a lot of things that start fires. Lightning is a big one here. We call that a natural ignition. Lightning fires generally start on top of ridges or the top of a mountain or towards the top. Those are often lower intensity fires.
Statistically, human caused fires caused most of the destruction and a lot of that locally because most human activities at the base of a mountain and fire moves uphill very quickly.
RMPBS: What should every household do to prepare for fire season?
SN: The best thing you can do to prepare for the fire season is prepare before the fire season. Doing wildfire mitigation, planning your evacuation route or your evacuation kit on the day of the evacuation of the wildfire is way too late.
So I recommend people reach out to the local fire district and look for a free wildfire risk assessment.
Reach out to the Colorado State Forest Service and look at their home hardening guidelines and go to ready.gov for evacuation checklist and follow your local governments, news media, radio stations and register for code Red or whatever Emergency alert notifications in your county.
RMPBS: What can residents do to reduce fire risk on their own property?
SN: There's a lot of things you can do to reduce fire risk on your property. The biggest one is what we call zone one. That is 0 to 5-foot away from your house.
Get rid of any combustible material that includes mulch, woodchips, straw. The stuff that a lot of people like to put in their gardens or their flower beds is very flammable. When it catches on fire, it causes embers, and now you have embers and flames right next to your house.
Also make sure when you leave your house that your doors and windows are closed and just reduce any way that an ember can get into your house, or in your wall, or in your roof. Check your vents, check your screens.
But really, that first five feet is probably the easiest and the most impactful thing a person can do.
RMPBS: How is climate change affecting the fire season here?
SN: We used to talk about fire season, and now it's really “fire year.”
There's less fires in the winter, obviously, but we saw three years ago the Marshall fire in Boulder, and that was New Year's Eve day.
I think there's a variety of things impacting the fire season. A lot of it is persistent drought, longer droughts.
If you look at the Animas River, runoff is getting earlier and earlier every year. That means water and snow melting in the water leaves quicker. So when you have earlier snowmelt, you have a longer fire season.
We're also seeing the monsoons be really, really finicky. They come in really strong or they don't come in at all. And those are the years that fire season seems to last well into October, November.
It's not unusual now to have fairly significant wildfires in October November when historically that didn't ever occur.
RMPBS: What fire mitigation efforts are being done by the fire department and local government?
SN: Fire mitigation is a community endeavor. It has to be because it's a community problem. And the solution has to be community based.
We have formed what we call the Wildfire Watershed Protection Fund, and this is an intergovernmental agreement between the city, county and fire department with the city and county, to provide financial assistance for mitigation.
Durango Fire provides the workforce. And we look at leveraging the grants we have and doing the most, most amount of good for the most amount of residents.
This agreement works well with all of our other partners, the Colorado State Forest Service, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, and having those partnerships which are really robust in this part of the state, we were able to get a lot of mitigation done.
It doesn't really matter anymore whose boundary, whose property it is. We can do mitigation across the boundary, across the fence because wildfire doesn't know boundaries. It doesn't know fence lines. Neither should mitigation.
RMPBS: How fast can the fire department respond to a wildfire?
SN: We respond as quickly as we can. The more remote in the backcountry or in the mountains obviously take us longer, but we take the threat of wildfire seriously all year round.
We have a full time dedicated wildfire crew that has four full time employees and about 14 to 15 seasonals annually. In addition, all of our staff stations are wildfire trained and certified.
So no matter where the fire is within our district or if it's in our neighbors district or the forest, we have mutual aid agreements with all of our partners. Everyone in the county and in our partner agencies respond very quickly and effectively to any fire threat to you.
No individual agency has enough people to suppress the fire and address the fire. But we all work together and train together.
RMPBS: Is the fire department adequately staffed and funded to handle a bad fire season?
SN: Well, staffing and funding is probably the biggest challenge of almost any fire department or any firefighting organization. Retention is difficult across the nation.
We have a harder time getting volunteers too. Volunteers are a crucial tool in wildfires because a wildfire is all hands on deck and takes a ton of manpower. Just not having the men and women that volunteer in our community can impact us.
Funding is always a problem. In the past few years, the price of fire trucks has gone up close to 40%, if not more, depending on the fire apparatus.
So, you know, increasing prices, employee retention and just trying to meet the growing needs of our community is difficult. We do a lot with a little.
We always try to match the support of the community with the support that the community demands.
RMPBS: What is something most people don’t know about wildfires?
SN: This ecosystem is actually really fire-dependent, like the ponderosa pine and the oak understory. That forest really thrives on fire. That's the natural cycle.
That ridgeline south of town, kind of between Hesperus and it goes all the way to the state line. That's like a natural lightning magnet. The weather patterns we get just build convective energy in them, and thunderstorms and storms throw tons of lightning out.
Had humans not built into the ponderosa pine and the oak understory, this place would have a natural 15 to 25 year old low intensity fire cycle. And that helps remove the oak brush and the overgrowth.
RMPBS: What is something most people don’t realize about fighting wildfires?
SN: I think a misconception is that firefighters will succeed every single time. We put great effort in training and preparing for wildfires, but there are certain conditions and certain fires that are not safe for our firefighters to engage in.
It's not a good feeling to let fires get bigger, but sometimes we just have to for the safety of our firefighters and the public.
Our main concern is life safety. Sometimes if we have to evacuate people, we can't suppress the fire. These firefighters, they have families too. They have to come home.
Type of story: Q&A
An interview to provide a single perspective, edited for clarity and obvious falsehoods.
An interview to provide a single perspective, edited for clarity and obvious falsehoods.
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