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Colorado Homes Most Vulnerable To Wildfires

USDA
/
inciweb.org

Colorado residents are more vulnerable than any other state in U.S. when it comes to potential damage or destruction from wildfires, with 83,174 homes located in areas with high-severity risk.

Core Logic, a company that analyzes financial and real estate trends surveyed residential areas in 13 states throughout the western United States. In 2012, 87.5 percent of acres lost to wildfire occurred in those 13 states. 10 percent of Colorado homes are at a very high fire risk. The study [.pdf] focused on millions of homes near wildfire prone areas and looked at fuel and terrain characteristics near seven different urban areas in addition to the statewide study. 

Boulder, one of the seven urban areas studied, comes in second only to Los Angeles for the number of homes listed as “high risk” for vulnerability to wildfires. The Boulder metropolitan area has 6,039 homes that fit this category compared to 9,110 in Los Angeles.

Tom Veblen, a professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been studying the trends of wildfires near the wildland urban interface. He says Coloradoans are moving to elevations at 8,000 feet or more, where the fast burning lodge pole pine forests dominate the landscape.

“That’s an area where when the forests burn they burn in very large events where thousands of acres burn in a single fire and at very high fire severity,” said Veblen. “Residential development over the last 30 years has increased the risk and hazard of homes burning because homes are increasingly being built in areas of naturally high fire risk.”

Between 1990 and 2008, 10 million of the 17 million new homes built in the United States were constructed in that wildland urban interface, meaning closer proximity to wildfire risk zones. As we've previously reported, one reason for for this increase has been the attractiveness of living in areas that have lakes, forests and mountains. Satellite photography of Colorado Springs in 1985 and a comparison taken in 2013 after the Waldo Canyon Fire shows just how much urban life has moved in the WUI. 

The other cities tallied by the Core Logic survey [.pdf] include Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Austin, San Diego and Prescott, Arizona. All those cities have lower rates of vulnerable homes and all have higher populations than Boulder with the exception of Prescott. Salt Lake City is the most protected with only 58 homes listed as high risk.

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