Yes, mitigation works

Does fire mitigation work or is it just another myth that gained traction during the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires? Did 1,000 homes have to burn and could the homeowners have done something about it? With Colorado on the watch list of the U.S. Congress for the double fire catastrophes, Gov. John Hickenlooper was on the hot seat last year. As a result, the governor requested an analysis of mitigation efforts in Black Forest. A report from Pikes Peak Wildfire Prevention Partners in cooperation with the Black Forest Fire Rescue and the Falcon Fire departments was released this month. “Our governor kind of got hit upside the head with questions from senators and congressmen,” said Jean Blaisdell of Woodland Park. Blaisdell hit the news when she initiated and managed the slash/mulch program for two years after the Hayman Fire in 2002. “We can’t wait any longer – I think a lot of people have hidden their heads in the sand, thinking that it can’t happen to them,” Blaisdell said. “In less than one year, 1,000 houses have burned.” Blaisdell and Margo Humes, fire marshal for the Palmer Lake Volunteer Fire Department, were part of the analysis, which includes a reprimand to homeowners. An in-your-face section of the report titled “willful blindness,” lists excuses collected from homeowners who don’t mitigate. “We’ve taken a lot of heat for that, because people don’t want to hear that,” Humes said. “But it is what it is.” While some mitigating rebels say they rely on insurance to take care of any damage others believe extinguishing fires is the responsibility of the local fire department. Mitigation is a risk-management issue, Blaisdell said. “People don’t recognize the danger,” she said. If the analysis of the inherent danger of wildfire is an intellectual enterprise, the survey, with responses from 46 firefighters, is a peek into the emotions of a firefighter who is forced to make a split-second decision. “The firefighters felt discouraged when they had to drive past a driveway,” Blaisdell said. “Some told about getting very close to a house but had to let the fire burn out until they could go back in.” All of the firefighters wrote of being overwhelmed by the monstrous fire. “A lot of them said if there was defensible space and they could reach the property they could do something,” Blaisdell said. Firefighters aren’t used to losing the battle, Humes added. “When you see that many homes go, they’re losing the battle. They had to drive past so many homes,” she said. If there is a winner in the report, it’s Cathedral Pines, a development surrounded by thick forest. “The developers had done pre-mitigation before construction,” Humes said. However, one stucco home burned in the subdivision. Humes relates a story told by one the neighbors. “She tried to move as much of the firewood away from the house, removed pallets stacked up against the house and scratched a line in the dirt,” she said. “But the fire was able to creep up to the house through the mulch, get up to the base of the house; but the mulch burned right up inside the bones, the frame.” Otherwise, the community survived with that one exception. “The fire remained on the ground, plus they had wide streets and water features in their yards,” Blaisdell said. “The firefighters could get in there and take care of it – and no other homes burned.” Despite the ongoing drought and extreme temperatures last summer, the report concludes that the catastrophic nature of the fire was preventable. “Mitigation works if the entire community does it together,” Humes said. “We’re not asking people to clear cut the forest. We want firefighters to be safe.” As luck would have it, Teller County neighbors can learn more about mitigation at a kick-off meeting from 9 a.m. to noon March 1 at the Ute Pass Cultural Center. “We consider ourselves one big giant community,” Blaisdell said. “Essentially all of Teller County is forest; not all of it is federal land, some of it is private. We have very few meadows.”