On Saturday, May 7, the Nederland Fire Protection District held a Wildfire Protection meeting at the Nederland community center. It was an educational meeting that gathered local, state, and US forest service resources to inform and prepare the community for potentially the worst fire season in Colorado’s history.

Although wildfires are not a new phenomenon in the area, research presented by Colorado Forest Restoration Institute scholar Scott Ritter shows that areas located in higher elevations have been experiencing an increasing amount of burned acres every year since 1984. Boulder county was identified as a high risk in the assessment for 2022, due to drier weather and high winds. The recent fires in northern Colorado have also been bigger and harder to control than in previous years, straining the resources available and putting communities in danger.

The Beaver Reservoir in Ward and the Cold Springs fires have taught our local first responders valuable lessons on how susceptible our community is to wildfires. Unfortunately, they showed that residents need to improve fire mitigation around their properties and acquire better access to communication with the first responders to stay informed in case of an emergency.

Everbridge is a free app that NFPD urges every mountain resident to download on their phones which will enable them to get notified of any events that threaten safety in the area, especially in the case of an evacuation.

While evacuations are crucial to guarantee public safety in case of an emergency, not all residents are aware of how to do it safely. There are three steps to an evacuation: an advisory, when residents should monitor conditions closely and start putting their plans into effect; a warning, when residents should start leaving to avoid traffic; and an immediate order of evacuation.

Everbridge is the best resource to be notified of this progression, although law enforcement will go door-to-door in case of an evacuation order.

Preparedness to evacuate is a crucial step that all residents should take as the summer starts. It involves having important documents and possessions such as birth certificates, IDs, vehicle and residence titles, and medications readily accessible.

Randy Wilbour from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office advises residents to have current video recordings of their homes saved on a cloud application, and to update insurance to cover at least $400 per square foot to afford reconstruction.

An important step of preparedness includes lowering the risks of a potential wildfire. NFPD sees this as a two step process: lowering the probability and the consequences of a fire. Lowering the probability of a fire is the responsibility of the city and county protection districts and involves reducing ignition through fire restrictions and landscape treatments in the forests, while lowering the consequence of a fire is the responsibility of the entire community.

Having a defensible area around structures, doing proper mitigation such as tree removal, and prescribed fire or grazing are the most important steps residents can take to avoid a mass disaster.

Some of the initiatives Boulder and Gilpin County, as well as the town of Nederland, have taken to ease the fire season include mitigating parcels on the Arapahoe Ranch and using this area as an educational tool to show residents how to properly mitigate their own property.

Gilpin County is also installing newly developed wildfire sensors in their forests. These sensors will create a grid that can differentiate the smoke from a campfire from a wildfire and will alert the fire station automatically by sending a notification and description of the smoke identified. Gilpin County will be the first area to have access to these sensors, and if they are successful, they can be installed in the forests nationally.

The Marshall fire has shown that current environmental conditions are concerning in the community, and residents who have not started to prepare are putting themselves and their neighbors at risk. Downloading Everbridge, becoming a Wildfire Partner, respecting fire restrictions, and helping your community to stay safe are the responsibility of all mountain residents.

For info about NFPD, check out https://www.nfpd.org/