After a historically dry winter, Denver officials draft a mass evacuation plan

Mueller is the director of Denver’s Office of Emergency Management, but it wasn’t until recently that he had to start considering the reality of how wildfires could threaten the Denver metro area, which prompted his office to create a new kind of plan. 

The office is drafting a mass evacuation plan, which Mueller said is a first for the city because it takes into account wildfire threats. While previous plans included evacuation protocols in the event of a hazardous materials disaster or a failure at Cherry Creek Dam, wildfires were a blind spot.

“We have not had a plan for something like that in Denver because we have frankly, historically not had wildfire risks,” said Mueller. “In the city of Denver, that’s not something we’ve had to deal with before.”

But 2021’s Marshall Fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Boulder County, necessitated a new plan, Mueller said.

The Marshall Fire didn't affect Denver directly, but it made Mueller realize that parts of Denver —like the region close to the airport and the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Refuge — could experience similar grass fires.

“We would need not just a few blocks, but an entire neighborhood evacuated,” said Mueller. 

Colorado experienced one of the driest and hottest winters on record, raising concerns about summer wildfires. Earlier this month, the Clear Creek and Jefferson County Sheriff's Offices practiced evacuations in case of fires.

Mueller said a lot of the ideas for Denver’s evacuation plan came from how neighboring counties handled past fires. Mueller observed the value of community education and tight communication in Boulder County, where nearly 40,000 people evacuated their homes.

Michael Chard, director of Boulder County’s Office of Emergency Management, said the Marshall Fire prompted new evacuation plans in the county and that agencies like the Boulder Fire Department have conducted daily assessments since 2022. 

“The trend is becoming more common, and a lot of it is because of where we’re building and how we’re building,” said Chard. “If you look at the Front Range, the density of urbanized areas that were once agricultural land is now high-density neighborhoods, and that creates potential conflagration risk.”

Officials from Larimer County all the way to El Paso County formed the Wildfire-Initiated Community Conflagration to create standardized response guidelines in case of multi-county emergencies. Traffic, naturally, was part of that discussion. Chard already had experience from past fires.

“What we've learned through our planning and experiences from the many fires in the urban environments up here in Boulder County is that the premium tactic is to get control of the traffic because congestion will hit,” said Chard. 

Rather than come up with specific evacuation scenarios in Denver County, Mueller aims to take a general approach in his new mass evacuation plan.

“We don’t know exactly when or where the emergency would occur,” said Mueller. “Obviously, it depends on the type of hazard.” 

But for transportation chokepoints, Mueller is looking at ways to communicate with the Colorado Department of Transportation to establish contraflow plans, which happens when both directions of an interstate switch to the same direction to allow for more traffic. This is a popular method in the southeastern United States, where hurricane evacuations are common. 

“These are all some of the tools and considerations that we are putting into the plan,” said Mueller. “We have looked at some of those best practices, lessons learned, and some of the potential choke points in moving a lot of people out very quickly.”

Mueller expects to present the plan to the leadership of safety agencies and first responders, along with the Mayor's office and DOT, in late June. After an initial round of feedback, Mueller said his office will redraft the plan with an expected publishing date sometime in the late summer. The plan will be annexed to the already existing overarching Emergency Operations Plan.