President George Bush’s ongoing efforts to loosen commercial
logging restrictions in national forests might speed up wildfire
prevention for thousands of residents in Perry Park just outside
Pike National Forest.
Loosened regulations could counteract the delays the U.S. Forest
Service has experienced this year in trying to shelter the
wildland-urban interface area from wildfires. Last summer, forest
service employees had to fight superfires and protect watersheds
from erosion contamination instead of working on fire-hazard
reduction in Pike National Forest near subdivisions.
The Hayman and Schoonover fires burned 140,000 acres in the
area, required 2,500 forest service workers and cost more than $40
million.
Perry Park was one of the many communities that faced evacuation
as fires raged throughout the state last summer. As wildfires
erupted during one of the hottest, driest summers on record,
east-coast-based home insurance companies red-lined entire counties
that had any amount of wildland-urban interface area. Properties in
urban plains business parks 20 miles away, such as Meridian
International Business Center, could not get new policies and some
policies skyrocketed or were blacked out. Fifty-five houses in
Douglas County burned to the ground.
Perry Park reportedly made it onto the forest service list of
priorities because the residents of the forested subdivisions in
southwestern Douglas County showed the government they take their
responsibilities more seriously than other communities on the edge
of national forest land.
Perry Park is one of 12 communities in the nation which recently
received firewise status, a new designation to encourage
wildland-urban interface communities to prevent and prepare for
wildfires.
Although wildfires affected dozens of communities in Colorado
the past couple summers, Perry Park and Genessee are the only
communities in the state recognized as “firewise.”
Out of 1,100 homeowners in Perry Park, 75 percent have done some
work to clear tall Ponderosa pines and thickets of scrub oak from
their yards, said Perry Park Metro District officials.
Much work remains, however, as Perry Park continues to grow at a
rate of 10 percent. The area is 25 percent built out. Although new
county regulations require firewise defensible space on residential
properties, the growth rate exacerbates other wildfire
hazards.
For example, residents have only one official exit route out of
the forest for thousands of residents, building expensive water
infrastructure in the remote area and continually educating
residents who move to the forest about fire hazards. Furthermore,
the state’s aging air fleets, which are used during wild fires to
spray forests with fire retardant, have been grounded because of
safety concerns after crashes last summer.
While the leadership taken by the Perry Park Metro District is
receiving national recognition as a community model, the chance
that a wildfire could explode next summer between Pike National
Forest and the subdivisions remains high.
The cool of winter has temporarily tamed the stress 2,500
southwestern Douglas County residents felt six months ago when
forced to evacuate their homes as the Hayman fire, Colorado’s
largest ever, roared just 7 miles from the subdivisions.
But Perry Park leaders have not cooled off in getting ready for
next summer. They organized a meeting Saturday for residents,
forest service officials, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, the
Colorado State Forest Service and the Larkspur Fire Protection
District.
The goal Saturday was to pressure the forest service to work on
cutting and thinning fire breaks between Pike and the subdivisions.
Another goal was to get more residents to volunteer on the
community effort.
Although residents are increasingly doing their share to reduce
the chances and degrees of possible catastrophic wildfires, some
are overwhelmed by inaction on neighboring federal land.
The Environmental Protection Act requires a two-year study to
make sure there are no endangered species before fire-prevention
forest thinning can begin. Post-wildfire aerial photos show that
areas with fewer trees and less forest undergrowth do not fuel
wildfires at the explosive rates seen the past several years in
overgrown forests across the nation. Droughts across the West the
past several years compounded the fire danger.
The forest service budget will determine how quickly wildfire
fuels reduction work can be planned and carried out near Perry
Park, said forest service spokesman Terry McCann.
National budget crunches in a sluggish economy the past 18
months make the forest service budget uncertain at best. Once the
budget is established, the service’s South Platte District will
work on thinning tree densities along Rampart Range Road, Dakan
Road and the Upper Platte River restoration area before it works on
fire breaks for Perry Park.