Local, regional and state wildfire leaders are concerned about increased fire danger this summer as the Western Slope experiences its worst snowpack in over 40 years.
But those agencies across the Roaring Fork Valley and the state are collaborating on fire mitigation and wildfire preparedness ahead of what is expected to be an extremely dry summer. Water and fire leaders from the city of Aspen, Pitkin County and both state and federal water experts updated the Aspen City Council on current drought conditions and what they’re doing to prepare their communities during a work session on Monday.
“Essentially, this has been one of the warmest on-record winters for the state of Colorado,” said Erin Walter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service based in Grand Junction.
Walter told the city council that NWS is predicting an early transition to wildfire season in Western Colorado beginning in June.
NWS projections are also showing a high probability of above-normal spring temperatures, which impacts snowmelt.
The city’s water sources are also facing a poor outlook this summer. The city’s main municipal water sources are Castle and Maroon creeks, and the city also owns and operates two hydroelectric facilities, one on Maroon Creek and one at the bottom of Ruedi Reservoir.
Droughts often lead to a dramatic reduction in hydroelectric power, Aspen’s Utilities Resource Manager Steve Hunter told the city council. Hunter said Ruedi is not expected to fill this summer, and streamflows on the Roaring Fork River are expected to be 54% of the average annual runoff.
It will have a large impact on not just the valley, but the entire Western Slope and Western United States as water leaders scramble to meet minimum power supply at Lake Powell, Hunter said.
“It’s regional, it’s local, it’s going to affect us all, not just in recreation, but agriculture, power — you name it,” he told the city council.
Local fire agencies are ramping up their firefighting efforts in anticipation of the dry summer. The Aspen Fire Protection District is using tax revenue from a new 0.5% sales tax approved by voters in November to stand up the district’s first-ever wildfire division.
Several new personnel will join the fire department to focus solely on fighting wildfires, Aspen Fire Chief Jake Andersen told the city council. The new division will include a new wildland battalion chief and lieutenant, seasonal firefighting and fuels management crews, and a communications and engagement coordinator to streamline wildfire communications.
But Andersen said the department also wants to lean on new firefighting technology.
“We’re really trying to leverage technology, knowing that we are a small fire department,” he said.
The fire department plans to deploy five semiautonomous wildland firefighting copters this summer for use on private, city and county land. They are 300-pound drones that can each hold up to 20 gallons of water and fire suppressant.
They can be used to fight fires at night when fires are at their weakest (the state doesn’t currently have aviation resources to fight fires at night, Andersen said) and to improve early detection of wildfires. The department is working with the Federal Aviation Administration for approval to use the drones on federal land.
Fire district leaders are also exploring new ways to fight fires without relying too heavily on finite water resources. The fire department is working with Sonic Fire Tech, a group of scientists working on manipulating sound waves to prevent oxygen molecules in the air from spreading fires.
“We’ve been moving as absolutely fast as the organization can handle to make [these initiatives] happen,” Andersen said.
The Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative is working with local agencies across the valley on large-scale fuel reduction projects.
Executive Director Angie Davlyn told the city council that the collaborative has worked in Pitkin County to create a fire break in the mid-valley between Aspen and Snowmass. A fire that starts in Carbondale could spread all the way to Snowmass in less than 12 hours, according to a simulation fire conducted by the U.S. Forest Service.
The collaborative raised nearly $2 million for the fuel reduction project in that area and has removed 1,000 trees and 2,000 tons of vegetation to prevent potential fires from spreading.
But local leaders are also pushing to educate the community about home hardening, wildfire preparedness and evacuation protocols.
Andersen said the best way to make a difference individually is to make the first five feet around a home fire-resistant. That includes installing a fire-resistant roof and siding and removing fire-prone vegetation close to homes.
The city and county are discussing evacuation plans and encouraging families to have conversations with their loved ones about their own evacuation plans in the event of an emergency.
The fire department is also identifying the best places in town to act as areas of refuge if evacuation isn’t possible. Those sites include brick buildings with appropriate ventilation systems, parking garages, irrigated fields, parks or open spaces.
“We’re all the responders that are working on mitigation and preparedness, and then, you know, if the day comes, on the response side of it,” said Chris Breitbach, Pitkin County’s emergency manager. “But the citizens that are listening to this and seeing this, they have a responsibility and an accountability also, and that’s understanding what the situational awareness is and then acting as appropriate when either directed to do so by authorities, or also making their own personal decisions because they have to leave.”
Breitbach said pitkinemergency.com is a good place to start to identify evacuation notices.
But there are also limitations to the work local leaders can do to prevent wildfires. Andersen said when the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport is closed next summer for construction, the fire department will likely need to rely on Rifle to refill air tankers with water.
And there are some fires that are difficult to fight, especially for a small department, Andersen said.
“There are fires that we don’t have the tools to fight, that’s why we’re trying to catch them when they’re small, that’s why we’re trying to catch them when they’re early. … There are fires that are hundreds of feet tall and massive flame lengths that truly nothing is effective against,” he said. “We really wanted to hopefully be the folks bringing good news on top of all this stuff that’s stacking up this winter, and there is a solution. We can mitigate and manage and improve the forest health, especially in the areas that are immediately adjacent to our built environment and people, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
“And I’ll be the first to tell you we’re behind. I wish we had done this 10 years ago, but I’m glad we’re starting today,” Andersen added.