Colorado pushes to stop relying on rented aircraft to fight wildfires

BY JESSE PAUL THE COLORADO SUN

Colorado is doubling down on its push to rely less on rented aircraft to ght wild res with the purchase of a second helicopter capable of quickly crisscrossing the state to detect and douse ames.

Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill on May 11 allocating $26 million to buy another “Firehawk,” a converted version of the military’s ubiquitous Black Hawk helicopter. e Firehawk’s top speed is about 160 mph and it can quickly slurp up and drop 1,000 gallons of water.

When res aren’t burning, the helicopter can be deployed on search and rescue missions.

Right now, Colorado has no operational, state-owned aircraft that can drop water and retardant on res. Instead, it relies on contracts with private aerial re ghting companies to respond to blazes across the state.

Some of those air resources are pooled regionally, meaning that the rented helicopters and airplanes serve multiple states at the same time.

But that’s become an issue as climate change causes dangerously dry conditions across the Western U.S. In 2020, for instance, when

Colorado had the three largest wild res in its history, the state struggled to secure the aircraft it needed because there were also res burning in New Mexico, California and several other states.

“We need to be able to control our aerial capacity,” Polis said before signing Senate Bill 161 at Centennial Airport hangar beside Colorado’s rst Firehawk, a hulking chopper painted red and white and emblazoned in the state logo. “We do some of that through contract work. But we can also do it, which is a lot better value for taxpayers on an ongoing basis, by purchasing some equipment that is good for decades.” e rst Firehawk is expected to go into service in the coming weeks once testing and nishing touches are complete. e second chopper could be ready to go as soon as next summer. e helicopters join two single- engine Pilatus PC-12s in Colorado’s aerial re ghting eet. But those planes can only track blazes, not put them out. e California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, for instance, owns a eet of more than 50 aircraft, including a mix of airplanes and helicopters. Reuters reports that a Cal Fire aircraft can reach most res within 20 minutes. e Washington State Department of Natural Resources owns nine helicopters that battle res. e Alaska Department of Natural Resources also owns a number of wild re- ghting planes.

State re o cials estimated earlier this year that it would cost about $2.5 million annually for an additional 150-day contract for a large air tanker, such as a British Aerospace 146. e Firehawk will operate year-round, though the state will have to hire and pay pilots and is responsible for the choppers’ maintenance.

Other states have much larger wild re- ghting aircraft eets.

Polis said his administration doesn’t have plans to buy more Firehawks or other re ghting aircraft in the near future.

“We’re always going to analyze cost bene t,” he said. “We want to make sure that we have the air support we need when we have a re — and then we’re going to look at the most e cient way to get that.” e Firehawks are expected to be in service for upward of three decades, though they do require a lot of maintenance.

Mike Morgan, who leads the Colorado Division of Fire Preven - tion and Control, said the Firehawk is the most versatile tool the state could have purchased. It doesn’t need to return to an airport after dropping water on ames like a xed-wing plane. e helicopter can simply dip its snorkel in a pond or pool and quickly ll up for its next drop. e Colorado Sun co-owns Colorado Community Media as a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy. It is a reader-supported news organization dedicated to covering the people, places and policies that matter in Colorado. Read more, sign up for free newsletters and subscribe at coloradosun.com. e restrictions and a burdensome planning process often postpone or inde nitely delay controlled burns. Fire ghters must complete multipart plans and comply with rules that can di er in each of Colorado’s 64 counties. Large burns on federal, state or county land require permits from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to ensure they don’t violate federal clean-air regulations. And in some areas, burns are o -limits from November through February because air pollution is already high. e end result is that only a small fraction of what needs to be burned ends up being burned. In 2020, reghters proposed burning 312,943 piles of branches and logs throughout the state but were able to do only about 18% of that work, records show. Of 88 burns proposed to consume vegetation across a large number of acres — in a forest or grassy area — only 55% were completed that year. e push-pull of re prevention and community opposition could soon come to a head as the U.S. Forest Service, Western governors and Colorado counties ramp up prescribed burning to rid overgrown forests and open spaces of a century worth of fuel, aiming to better protect nearby communities. Federal re simulations found 500,000 buildings could now be exposed to wild re in a single year.

Another plus: It has an external water tank instead of carrying a bucket, meaning it can y over homes and roadways that otherwise must be evacuated when other, bucket-wielding re ghting helicopters are in use.

“ is is probably the best tool in the toolbox we can ask for,” he said. e rst Firehawk will be stationed at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Je erson County, though it can be moved around the state and positioned in areas that are forecast to have high re danger. It’s unclear where the second chopper will be based.

Extreme weather and climate change also are getting in the way of executing prescribed burns, documents obtained by ProPublica under the Colorado Open Records Act show. In 2022, a prescribed re driven by high winds and tinderdry vegetation morphed into the largest re in New Mexico’s history, with devastating consequences for residents.

In Colorado, residents grew wary of controlled burns after one escaped in 2012 and killed three people. e Lower North Fork Fire, near the foothill community of Conifer, burned 24 structures and 4,140 acres. Afterward, prescribed burning ceased as state lawmakers enacted stricter rules governing the practice.

Only about 1 in 1,000 prescribed burns spirals out of control, statistics show, but the ones that do have added to public opposition.

Public lands managers hope to treat 50 million acres with controlled burns and mechanical thinning in the next decade.

After Larry Donner, a retired re chief in Boulder, and his wife purchased their house in 1991, they installed noncombustible siding, double-paned windows and a reresistant roof, and they replaced a wood deck with agstone. Still, it burned to the ground in the Marshall Fire. He attributed the re’s spread to poor maintenance of open spaces near communities.

“ irty years ago, they mowed 20 feet around subdivisions, or they grazed and plowed grasslands — then they planted houses and they stopped,” said Donner, who gestured toward grassy Davidson Mesa as he stood in front of his partially reconstructed Louisville home. “Fuel reduction is a big thing for me. If you can keep re out of neighborhoods, you can better protect those neighborhoods.”

A New Understanding of Grassland Risk

Coloradans have always understood the threat of forest res. e state ranks rst among eight Western states for the number of acres at high risk for re, or “ resheds,” federal models show.

e Marshall Fire, however, made many residents realize that the state’s vast and populous grasslands — abutting its largest metro areas on the eastern ank of the Rocky Mountains — are also a wild re threat. Cities from Fort Collins, in the north, to Pueblo, in the south, where most Coloradans live, are surrounded by thousands of square miles of at, open space that evolved to burn every ve to 15 years.

e reshed around Boulder and the Arvada reshed to the south are among the 10 most at-risk zones from Wyoming to Nebraska, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Boulder ranked 41st in the western U.S. out of 7,688 such hazardous areas.

Around the Denver metro area, grassland acres outnumber forest acres, according to a rst-of-its-kind analysis conducted for ProPublica using wildland re data compiled by federal agencies.

is spring, wild res in grasslands and brush on the eastern slope of the Rockies, known as the Front Range, have already forced evacuations and concert cancellations in suburban enclaves.

“ e urgency of re in the county, whether in the mountains or on the plains, is very real,” said Boulder County Commissioner Ashley Stolz- mann during a February meeting. e permits require contingency plans, noti cation of nearby residents and analysis of the vegetation, and are approved only when winds are deemed less likely to send smoke toward homes. e region is out of compliance with national air quality standards.

In the forests that blanket Boulder County’s foothills, residents are accustomed to smoke in the air. Fire ghters have burned vegetation there, primarily in the woods, since 1997. But for every successful burn, there are just as many that don’t happen, public records obtained by ProPublica show.

Each year, the Boulder County wildland team and the city of Boulder’s Fire-Rescue unit request smoke permits — required when burns on public lands could cause air quality issues — from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Air Pollution Control Division. Many are for county- and city-managed open spaces. Some foothill areas are grassy, like the valley oor below.

Burns aren’t allowed when the state issues air pollution emergencies or alerts for the area. And the number of high-ozone days along the northern Front Range and in the Denver metro area is increasing.

Brian Anacker, senior manager of science and climate resilience for the city of Boulder, said his community is “trying to accelerate our prescribed re program.” But there are “barriers upon barriers” that stop that from happening.

Regulations can also work at cross purposes: Winter weather often offers the lowest risk of a prescribed burn getting out of control, but that’s also when smoke below 6,400 feet can most a ect the region’s poor air quality.

Fire ghters and state air quality regulators have begun experimenting with allowing burns in the metro Denver area during winter months.

“We are starting to look for more and more of what we would consider o windows,” said Brian Oliver, wildland re division chief for the city of Boulder.

For example, Boulder County reghters asked to burn up to 40 acres on Hall Ranch during snow season using “additional experimental provisions.” ese included burning between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on days when the air is clear, discussing the timing with the state meteorologist and advising state air pollution sta at least a day in advance.

Fire ghter David Buchanan last year asked regulators for permission to burn during the “high-pollution season,” when it’s typically prohibited. He said that granting the permit would allow crews to torch grassy areas and saplings when temperatures are low and there is more moisture on the ground. Doing so would minimize smoke, he added, because fuels burn “swiftly and e ciently.” State regulators granted the permit. Boulder County’s challenges were echoed by federal watchdogs and Western governors. e Government Accountability O ce and state leaders this spring urged the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider regulations that curtail prescribed burning in areas that aren’t in compliance with air quality standards.

Land managers told the GAO that these rules “could limit their ability” to rid high-risk areas of vegetation, investigators said in a March report. e GAO added that controlled res could lead to less smoke overall because they help prevent future wild res.

Both the rising interest in controlled burns and the di culty in conducting them are apparent at the state’s Division of Fire Prevention & Control. e agency, created after the escaped Lower North Fork Fire, requires re ghters to complete a “prescription” that assesses 23 risk factors, including how quickly fuels will burn, how likely the re is to escape, how smoke can be managed and how far the re is from homes and businesses.

Ensuring the public understands that there’s a detailed, scienti c process behind prescribed burning is key to gaining support for more controlled burns, re ghters and land managers agree.

Also included in the prescription are optimal weather conditions, including a minimum temperature for burns in grass and brush of 30 degrees and a maximum of 80 degrees; relative humidity between 5% and 40%; and wind speed between 2 mph and 15 mph.

Such conditions are becoming rarer.

Snowstorms, re weather watches and red ag warnings — alerts sent out when dry air and high, gusty winds create conditions that could rapidly spread res — forestalled prescribed burns this spring in the city of Boulder. Burning is prohibited when these warnings, issued by the National Weather Service, are in e ect.

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