We occasionally check in with our colleagues at Boulder Reporting Lab about the stories they’re following. This time, reporter Tim Drugan joined us to talk about efforts to protect homes from wildfires.
Nonprofits are stepping up to help with wildfire mitigation in Boulder County as government efforts continue to drag. This past November, Boulder County passed a fire mitigation tax that suggested future financial assistance would be available for homeowners who want to make their homes and properties more fire resilient. But the rollout of these financial aid programs has been slow.
In mid-August, three nonprofits — Boulder Watershed Collective, Saws and Slaws and Team Rubicon — stepped up to help mitigate fire risk on about ten properties in Coal Creek Canyon. It’s a needed service. Resources for wildfire prevention are scarce in Colorado's mountain communities. Meanwhile, those areas have highly flammable landscapes that are becoming even more so as pine beetles kill trees and add to fuel loads. Climate change also continues to dry things out with heat waves.
But protecting a property against wildfire is not cheap.
“Many homeowners, when left to their own devices, are forced to rely on hope that fires will simply avoid their properties,” Drugan told KUNC. “But that's not a great strategy because wildfire kind of takes the individualistic mindset away. Because even if you have mitigated, if your neighbor hasn't and their, say, wooden shingle roof catches on fire, the wind is going to pick up embers from that wooden roof and throw it towards your property, and it could undo all of your best efforts.”
The Wildfire Partners program is a county government resource available to Boulder-area residents.
“It will come and tell unincorporated Boulder County residents what their biggest risks are for wildfire on their property. But the holdup there is that, again, it's not helping with the cost in a meaningful way,” Drugan said. “They come and say, ‘Take down this tree. You need to replace your siding, replace your roof.’ But then the homeowner is tasked with taking care of that. It's also an iteration of a concern that has been raised about climate change, promoting inequities as it continues.”
The Coal Creek mitigation effort is an example of this inequity in action, Drugan told KUNC.
“The Wildfire Partners program was able to provide input for Boulder County residents. But neighbors nearby, that were in Jefferson County, were not able to access that resource. And luckily, one of the nonprofits was able to provide some assessments. But moving forward, there's a real risk that some counties are going to provide their residents with a greater amount of aid to protect their homes from these natural disasters that climate change is going to make more ferocious, and other counties are going to be left high and dry.”
