As Loren Russell, Durango Fire Protection District’s wildfire mitigation specialist, walks around a La Plata County home, he stops at a neatly stacked pile of firewood tucked under an overhanging portion of the home.
“This one here is the classic no-no,” he said. “This one’s particularly egregious, actually.”
The pile of cured wood has trapped pine needles and leaves between logs. It is the perfect place for an ember, which can travel miles from a raging wildfire and is one of the biggest threats to homes, to land and start smoldering.
“Before you know it, you’ve got a rager going, right underneath your eave right here, with your nice stained rough-cut pine siding,” Russell said.
Part of his job is to perform the free wildfire risk assessments offered by Durango Fire. He or another inspector visits homes and thoroughly evaluates them, documenting where home-hardening measures are necessary, where removing fuels could help or other improvements that can make a property more resistant to wildfire.
When firefighters determine how to best use their limited resources, hazards like a woodpile under an eave might cause them to focus efforts on homes that are easier to protect, said Battalion Chief Scott Nielsen.
In a typical year, the department conducts between 50 and 100 inspections.
Since the Palisades Fire, which broke out in the mountains near Los Angeles on Jan. 7, destroyed 6,800 structures and killed 12 before it was contained three weeks later, the department has received approximately 150 requests for inspections.
“People look at a neighborhood like (Pacific Palisades) and then they look at the grid in Durango and they can put two and two together,” Russell said.
He said it’s unfortunate that tragedy is sometimes needed to bring a point into focus – but it does work.
For years, stakeholders in the region have been trying to get homeowners and neighborhoods to build and retrofit homes with fire-resistant materials and to mitigate hazards that can trap embers and spread flames.
Community groups, such as the Wildfire Adapted Partnership, which formed after the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire, work with neighborhoods and individuals on outreach and provide cost-share subsidies and other incentives for mitigation work.
If the possibility of losing a home to fire wasn’t enough, insurance companies have canceled policies across Southwest Colorado for homes they consider too risky to insure.
Nielsen and Russell use three defensible space zones to categorize their recommendations to homeowners, which include maps and annotated photographs. Critically, the reports are confidential and not shared with insurance companies.
Much of their efforts focus on recommendations to Zone 1, which covers everything within 5 feet of the home. There, they recommend removing all flammable material, especially anything overhanging the home, raking out organic material from under decks and sealing off spots where embers can get trapped.
“A year like this is when dense neighborhoods start to do actually actionable work,” Nielsen said. “A little bit of work in Zone 1 by 30 people could easily save part of town or a neighborhood.”
In Zone 2, which is 5 to 30 feet from the home, the solutions can get more creative. Firefighters typically recommend thinning out shrubs and trees, and removing ladder fuels that let fires climb high into trees.
“There’s a million different ways to solve this problem,” Russell said, looking at a stand of trees atop a slope filled with Gambel oak brush. “It’s more of an art than a science.”
The inspections often prompt homeowners to realize that Zone 2 might be their neighbor’s property – or even their living room.
Given the L.A.-area fires and the familiar wildfire conditions – experts warn that the season is shaping up similarly to 2002 and 2018, years of major wildfires near Durango – it’s been an unusually busy spring for those in wildfire mitigation work.
Normally, the wildfire mitigation season lasts seven or eight months and is limited by snowfall, said Terry Hunt, founder of Wildfire Defense. But the lack of snow this year has made working through the winter not only possible, but more important.
“We never had requests this time of year,” Hunt said. “... We worked right up through till Dec. 28 and then I tried calling it for a few more months – that didn’t work.”
Homeowners insurance remains one of the big drivers of mitigation work, Hunt and Nielsen said.
“I did 19 assessments last week. Insurance came up every single time,” Nielsen said.
Although insurers have, of late, refused to cover homes in high-risk areas including large portions of Southwest Colorado, that is beginning to change. Insurance companies previously did not consider parcel-level mitigation or use sophisticated models to assess a home’s wildfire risk.
During a visit to Durango last October, Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway unveiled the broad strokes of a bill that would require insurers to consider parcel-level mitigation. It would also require companies to be transparent about how their models work.
That bill, HB25-1182, has its first committee hearing on Wednesday. Sen. Cleave Simpson, an Alamosa Republican who represents much of Southwest Colorado, is a lead sponsor.
“It’s saying things that should have been done a long time ago,” Hunt said. “But I think it’s going to help. I think it’s going to help a lot.”
The likely impact, he predicted, is that insurance companies will inspect homes before renewing policies if the bill passes and becomes law. That, in turn, could prompt homeowners to take on mitigation work.
That’s great, he said, given that homeowners can either pay thousands once to have their property reinforced, or they can pay thousands in insurance premiums each year.
La Plata County will host a community preparedness workshop at the fairgrounds in Durango during the annual wildfire evacuation exercise from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 22. The event will feature lessons on creating defensible space and information about grant and cost-share opportunities for wildfire mitigation work.
DFPD is working through a backlog of about 60 requests for a wildfire hazard assessment, however anyone interested can request one at www.durangofire.org/wildfire-risk-assessment-request-form.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
This story has been updated with the correct identifier of the bill moving through the Colorado Legislature. It is HB25-1182, not SB25-1182.
