BAILEY HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE
For a Fire Adapted Community
Drawing on research and management experience in Australia, Canada, and the United States, Trust: A Planning Guide for Wildfire Agencies and Practitioners is a great resource for wildfire managers and communities. This document was a collaboration between Oregon State University, U.S. Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, University of Alberta, and Charles Sturt University.
Fire Adapted Communities brings folks working on wildfire mitigation from all over the country together to learn from one another. “It’s a program that brings together people involved in forest fire, forest health and green restoration programs,” said Carol Ekarius, executive director of CUSP. “Between Hayman and Waldo and Black Forest, we’ve seen the impact on communities that fire has.”
The annual conference this week is taking place here in Colorado, hosted by the Coalition for the Upper South Platte. Field trips are showcasing some of the work in the Pikes Peak region before and after wildfire.
Fire behavior is a tricky thing to predict, but not understanding wildfire movement can have drastic consequences.
Home Address Signs
The Divide Fire Department has green reflective address number signs recommended by the Fire Inspector available. The fire department provides these signs as a community service, and asks for a $10 donation. The available signs are one-sided, so order two signs if you need to show your house number on both sides. Signs can be made vertical or horizontal. Having fire-resistant, visible address signs is important for responders to locate your home in the event of a wildfire or other emergency.
Aspen Hills neighbors are ordering address signs together, so please contact Tanna Hackney (tanna.hackney@gmail.com) by July 1 if you would like an address sign.
Street Signs
Aspen Hills neighbors banned together to prepare for wildfire season by working on street sign installation on Wildfire Preparedness Day! Street signs are important to help emergency responders navigate neighborhoods during wildfires or other disasters. Thanks to Paul for re-grading entrances, and to Greg, John, Glenn, Curtis, Dana, Rick, and Tanna and her son for installing new street sign bases and helping remove old signs.
Sign up today for Project Learning Tree’s Fire Ecology Institute for Educators! This hands-on workshop runs from June 16-20 and is a great opportunity to learn more about wildfire and forest ecology, and how you can engage your students in learning about these important topics. The workshop will be held in Florissant, CO at The Nature Place, an ideal location for exploring the forest and the impacts of recent wildfires. The materials and strategies to be presented are appropriate for 3rd-12th grades in formal and non-formal settings, and can easily be integrated into interdisciplinary curriculum. The cost of $250 for the workshop includes lodging, meals, materials, instruction, and field trips for the week. Colorado residents may receive a $100 stipend upon completion of the course, and the workshop is eligible for continuing education credits.
The Coalition for the Upper South Platte (CUSP) is excited to help sponsor this event in our watershed this year. Please support this program and gain skills that you can bring back to your classroom!
Find more information at http://coloradoplt.org/workshop/2014-fire-ecology-institute-for-educators/
You can also contact Shawna Crocker, PLT Coordinator, at scrocker@colostate.edu or 303-278-8822 for more information.
Changes in land use and well intended, but misguided, forest suppression policies drastically altered our forests. Understanding what forests looked like before these changes is important for making forest management decisions as we work to proactively restore forest health and reduce the risks of catastrophic fire.
Siding is the largest overall surface of your home, and can ignite when exposed to extremely high radiant heat from wildfires. Replacing your easily ignitable siding (such as wood) with ignition resistant siding helps protect your home and the homes of those around you. Ignition resistant siding options include stone/rock, stucco, and cement board. Get started today!
In a study by Headwaters Economics, it was found western communities are doing relatively little to meaningfully respond to wildfire risk. Understanding challenges in high-risk communities is critical for figuring out how policies and proactive measures can reduce risks.
Lessons highlighted include:
Very interesting finding from Headwaters Economics – the Firewise program is effective at what it was designed to do (increase safety), but is not associated with lower suppression costs. Read the full brief on the Headwaters Economics website.
The Firewise Communities/USA® Recognition Program often is mentioned as a potential remedy. However, Firewise focuses on increasing safety and was not designed to lower suppression costs.
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The costs of fighting wildfires has become a major policy issue in the United States, and there is general agreement that both the area burned by wildfires and the frequency of large fires, often termed “mega-fires,” will increase in coming decades.
As a result, policy makers, land owners, and wildfire managers are seeking viable solutions to reduce wildfire risks and costs. One often-talked about remedy is the voluntary Firewise Program. Such efforts—focusing largely on reducing fuels and making structures safer from fires—can provide a safer environment for firefighters and enable more structures to be saved.
The Firewise Program was not designed to lower suppression costs, and our research finds no evidence of a relationship between wildfire suppression costs and Firewise participation.
The lack of evidence that Firewise reduces suppression costs suggests that policy makers attempting to address increasing wildfire suppression costs are better served focusing on other solutions, such as shifting costs to the local jurisdictions and property owners incurring wildfire liabilities and limiting future development in fire-prone landscapes.
The challenges of wildfire suppression are two-fold and necessitate different approaches for addressing issues in built environments compared to where no development yet exists. In wildfire-prone areas with built homes, suppression resources and mitigation efforts, including the Firewise Program, are critical for protecting people and property.
However, because the vast majority of private land in the western WUI is not yet developed (84%), solutions are needed to address the potential for expanded development and associated wildfire risk. For now, it appears that the Firewise Program is not a solution for reining in suppression costs when wildfires threaten communities.
We must all work together to promote Fire Adapted Communities and return the forests to a natural cycle.
Cooper, Jonathan Bruno of the Coalition for The Upper South Platte and president and owner of Wildfire Planning International Molly Mowery each said Thursday that revamped codes and regulations need to go hand-in-hand with individual responsibility in order to achieve “Fire Adapted Communities.”
Bruno is a proponent of allowing the forest to mitigate itself through ground fires. Those easily manageable blazes were the norm before the late 19th Century when people became obsessed with putting out every fire as quickly as possible. Bruno said education and mitigation to restore forests to a pre-20th Century state is like a layer cake.
He said if federal, state, regional and local officials join with homeowners associations and individual residents, the result will be a sweet one.
“This isn’t going to stop,” Bruno said, referring to increased fire activity as a result of extreme climate conditions and more and more people moving into the WUI.
Bruno and CUSP volunteers have already been thinning forests around Teller County and Park County towns, attempting to create a barrier that will slow fire and keep it low as it approaches.
Mowery believes that turning WUI areas into Fire Adapted Communities is definitely possible.