12 minute read
Lessons Learned from Colorado's biggest, wildest Fires
The East Troublesome Fire ran through the Coyote and Kawuneeche Valleys on the west side of Rocky at a rate of 1,000 acres per hour, beginning on Oct. 20
RMNP photo
Part one: my interview with Bill Gabbert, of Wildfire Today and Fire Aviation
Advertisement
by Barb Boyer Buck
Like others, I was shocked nearly 30,000 acres of Rocky Mountain National Park burned in a single season, more than in any other in its 105-year history. This loss for those who find solace and build lifeforce in the wilderness is painful. It's difficult not to have deep feelings about the events that ravaged through the west side of RMNP and spotted over the Continental Divide, evacuated the entire populations of Grand Lake and the Estes Valley, and complicated COVID19 susceptibility by creating hazardous air quality. Especially since I was sitting in the middle of it.
The Cameron Peak Fire started in the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, less than 100 miles north of Estes Park near Red Feather Lakes, on August 13, 2020. The Pine Gulch Fire, which started with a lightning strike earlier in the year 18 miles north of Grand Junction, had already burned more than 137,000 acres by then. Pine Gulch was declared the largest wildfire in Colorado's history until the Cameron Peak fire grew much larger. This fire burned 208,913 acres, and containment was not achieved until early this month.
This fire moved into the northwest boundaries of Rocky during the second week of October and several trail and road closures within the Park's boundaries were the result.
The Cameron Peak fire burns near Glen Haven, as seen from my deck on October 16.
Photo by Barb Boyer Buck
On October 14, the East Troublesome Fire ignited north of Hot Sulphur Springs, west of the Continental Divide. High winds ran the fire uncontrollably more than 100,000 acres between October 20-23, pushing 18 miles into the west boundary of Rocky on the first day. Grand County Sheriff Brett Schroetlin reported this fire intensity and rapid growth as “unheard of. This is the worst of the worst of the worst,” he said, in an interview with NPR.
Near the end of this four-day period, the East Troublesome fire spotted in two places, jumping a mile and a half of tundra on the Continental Divide, on the east side of the Park. This satellite fire was named the Thompson Zone, and has burned more than 4,346 acres of forested hillsides and meadows in Moraine Park and Upper Beaver Meadows within the boundaries of Rocky. The East Troublesome Fire, including the Thompson Zone, was fully contained by the beginning of December.
Evacuations of Estes Park began on Oct. 22 under midday dark skies
Photo by Inciweb.gov
Mass evacuations for the Town of Estes Park began on October 22, when the two leading edges of fire from the Cameron Peak and the Thompson Zone/East Troublesome fires had grown to within five miles from the north and west sides of town. The entire Estes Valley was on mandatory evacuation orders by the morning of Saturday, Oct. 24. Highways 36 and 34 were closed to incoming traffic; all of the businesses were closed. Visitors were not welcome.
This has never before happened in this community which is supported nearly entirely by tourism, not even during the 2013, 1,000-year flood.
To put some of this in perspective, I consulted with Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today and Fire Aviation, two websites dedicated to presenting news and opinions on wildfire-fighting operations and policies.
Gabbert was a wildland fire fighter for the US Forest Service and the National Park Service. He was on Hotshot and engine crews in southern California for 20 years, followed by a position as a fire management officer for NPS, in charge of fire management
Decimated trees on Trail Ridge Road on Oct. 23.
Larimer County Sheriff photo
for seven national park units in the greater Black Hills area of Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
“Those fires were burning under unusual conditions,” Gabbert said about the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome fires in an interview on Nov. 2.
“That part of Colorado has been in extreme or exceptional drought this summer. Especially under extremely windy conditions, which those fires were burning under part of the time, there is no way to stop them.”
Gabbert's remarks on the conditions that existed were confirmed by InciWeb's report on the East Troublesome Fire.
These fires consumed more land in Rocky Mountain National Park than in any other incident or combination of incidents since its establishment in 1915.
InciWeb is an interagency all-risk incident information management system, available online at https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/ The service was developed to provide the public with a single source of incident-related information and provide a standard reporting tool for the public affairs community.
"The combination of these factors led to unprecedented, wind-driven, active fire behavior with rapid spread during the overnight hours,” reported InciWeb. “During this period the area north of US Highway 40 from near Granby and extending eastward to Grand Lake and Estes Park had over 7,000 structures threatened, and a population of over 35,000 placed under a mandatory evacuation.”
“Under those conditions you can't put firefighters out in front of the fire,” Gabbert said. “It's less intense on the sides, on the flanks of the fire. The only thing firefighters can do is back off. They just have to wait until the weather changes or the fuel changes.” Fully outfitted to fight fires at high elevations, the crews that battled these fires are truly tactical athletes, said Gabbert.
Spruce Canyon on Oct. 22
RMNP photo
“At that elevation it's difficult for firefighters, they have to be in extreme physical shape,” he said. Thus, teams are switched out every two weeks.
“After dozens of fatalities on wildland fire, investigations have found that when fire fighters work 14 days plus two days for travel, it's much safer,” he said.
Transitions between the teams take at least 24 hours he said, and local and volunteer teams are added to the management teams brought in by federal agencies. Because the first priority is always human life when fighting wildfire, followed closely by the protection of developed lands and livestock, these fire crews recommended various evacuations in association with the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome fires, Gabbert said, but local law enforcement agencies were the ones to make the make the final decisions.
Interagency crews stage operations in Upper Beaver Meadows on Oct. 24
RMNP photo
Sheriff Schroetlin in Grand County and Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith ordered these evacuations in time for residents and visitors to get clear of the fires' paths. The only human lives lost in these two fires were an elderly couple in Grand Lake, who opted to shelter in their basement (which they believed to be fireproof) instead of following evacuation orders.
Between Highways 125 and 34 in Grand County, more than 300 homes were lost during the East Troublesome Fire's epic run west. In the Cameron Peak Fire, 469 structures were damaged or lost reported the Denver Post in early November.
Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith took this photo on Oct. 23, on Trail Ridge Road on the west side of RMNP.
Larimer County Sheriff photo
The conditions that created these firestorms have been developing for a long time and appear to be a combination of climate change, reduced funding for wildland firefighting, and fluctuating wildland management policies.
Of course, there is the obvious culprit: the fuel created by massive amounts of dead and dying trees due to an unprecedented pine-beetle infestation that started in the mid-1990s.
Pine beetle infestations occur naturally about every 30 years. These tiny insects bore into the bark of pines (they prefer lodgepole pines, but also infect other pines if the infestation is large). The larvae incubating in the trees are usually killed within a few years by extreme cold temperatures. However, steadily-warming temperatures did not kill these insects and their numbers flourished in Colorado's high country for nearly 30 years.
A comparison graphic showing the severe mountain pine beetle infestation in Rocky. This infestation did not begin to abate until 2015.
RMNP photo
More than 95 percent of the state's established lodgepole forests were killed in the most recent infestation, which did not start to abate until 2015. According to Rocky's website, Colorado has been experiencing warmer-than-normal conditions for the past decade.
“When insects kill a tree, it goes through stages,” Gabbert said. “In the first stage, the needles turn red. When those red, dead needles are still on the tree, they have less moisture content. You can have crown fires which are much more dangerous than the green trees. When the needles fall off, a fire will be less intense above the ground, but you can have more fuels on the ground which increases the intensity on the forest floor. After five, ten or 15 years of infestation, the trees can start to fall over,” reported Gabbert. “It is extremely hazardous for firefighters to fight fire in an area that has been infested with insects.”
In an interview with KWGN News on October 23, Colorado's governor Jared Polis said the wildfires are a combination of “climate change and increased population and utilization of public lands.”
Nearly five million people visited Rocky Mountain National Park in 2019, most of them entering on the Estes Park side, a community with less than 7,000 year-round residents. The impact of human utilization of our wilderness is a significant threat and depends greatly on everyone taking personal responsibility when recreating in the public lands.
Rocky Mountain National Park and its surrounding communities have had a fire ban in place since August 13; however, both the East Troublesome and Cameron Peak fires were determined to be human-caused. “There are only three causes for wildfire,” Gabbert said,
“Volcanos, lightning, or human-caused.” But that doesn't mean these fires were arson, he said. Nor does it necessarily mean that people ignored the fire bans.
“Human-caused” can mean loose chains and vehicles towing trailers, causing sparks, sometimes for miles through the forest, Gabbert explained. Other causes can include parking a car in high grass, automobile crashes, throwing cigarette butts out the window, and disposing of ash from a fireplace, to name just a few, he said.
The Grand Lake Entrance Station of RMNP was completely destroyed on October 21.
RMNP photo
“Some organizations preemptively close areas for extreme fire danger” during red-flag conditions, said Gabbert, such as northern Colorado has been experiencing from mid-summer until late fall. “ Education is one of the traditional ways of preventing fires,” he said.
Prescribed fires would also reduce the amount of the fuel, reducing the threat to the community, Gabbert reported. “One of the impediments to conducting prescribed burns is funding,” he said.
I asked Gabbert to give me an overview of the history of wildfire mitigation policies over the years. He told me that National Forest Service implemented the “10 a.m. Policy” after the Big Burn of August, 1910. Fires raged through Montana, Washington, and Idaho consuming three million acres in multiple fires with the Big Burn.
“After that, the NFS tried to staff up and implement everything they could so that they could suppress every fire by 10 a.m. on the following day,” explained Gabbert. “It was impossible to always meet that goal, but they tried to do it anyway.”
But more fires you put out, the less natural fires – which are necessary for the ecosystem – occur. “Almost all vegetation evolves in an ecosystem of burning,” he said. “Many plants and ecosystems are dependent on fire. If fire doesn't come through on a somewhat regular basis, varying anywhere from 5-10 years up to 300 years, it changes the ecosystem.”
Thus, the forests have much more fuel than would naturally be present.
In the 1970s, policies evolved to include the practice that Native Americans have employed for centuries: prescribed burns, said Gabbert.
“This was conducted to replicate more natural conditions,” he said. “The number of prescribed fires increased until about 15-20 years ago when the funding for prescribed fires has been reduced.”
Another, very risky, wildfire fighting policy is sometimes attempted, Gabbert reported, the “let it burn,” a limited-suppression philosophy.
The southern edge of the Cameron Peak Fire came within five miles of Estes Park. In areas where the pine beetle has killed the needles, very dangerous crown fires and steep terrain conspired to keep firefighting efforts limited to life and structure protections.
Inciweb.gov photo
“This is extremely difficult to do - it takes extremely smart people to manage fires like that and to be successful,” he said. “All it takes is one wind event like we had in Colorado in October to lose control. In my personal opinion, limited suppression fires are too dangerous to do unless you are close to a season-ending event. In prescribed burns, you pick the time and place.” Even with a significant snowfall, wildfires can smolder under the snow and spring up again in the spring.
These days, firefighting on public lands includes a variety of policies and many experts on climate, weather, logistics, and terrain are employed. But Gabbert feels not enough funding is contributed to these efforts, including the low pay earned by these professionals.
“They are not even called firefighters,” he said, “they are called forestry technicians.” My conversation with Bill Gabbert gave a me a lot to think about concerning the fires in my backyard. He even offered some practical advice for homeowners in forested areas on how to protect their own lands. “It's the homeowner's responsibility to create defensible space around their home,” he said.
“One way to reduce the chance of a home being destroyed in a wildfire is reducing flammable material in the Home Ignition Zone. This includes spacing the crowns of trees at least 18 feet apart that are within 30 feet of the home, 12 feet apart at 30 to 60 feet from the home, and 6 feet apart at 60 to 100 feet away from structures." Other steps to be taken is to employ fire-resistant material while building homes in areas that experience high fire-dangers, he said.
After Gabbert retired, he was the executive director of the International Association of Wildland Fire for a time before launching his websites. His informative articles on Wildfire Today and Fire Aviation give a lot of insight and background on firefighting efforts today.
Please come back next month for part two of “Lessons from the biggest, wildest fires in Colorado's history,” featuring an interview with Toddi Steelman, Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, and several other professionals.
Barb Boyer Buck first moved to Estes Park in the mid 1990s, to become the special sections and magazine editor for the Estes Park Trail-Gazette. She has been a professional writer, photographer and researcher for the past 25 years and is the managing editor of HIKE ROCKY Magazine
Photo by Michael Mowery https://www.michaelmowerymedia.com/
