PHOTO BY RJ SANGOSTI: 6 2012 THE DCNVÍH POiT. MEDIANEWS GROUP

12 Planning Juiy2013

IN THE PATH"OF

¿1... t t *

WHAT'S BEING DONE to cope withthe growing menace of wildfire.

By Allenj^stTjp Waldo Canyon fire ripped through Colorado Springs last sur.

i nearly 350 homes. The experience in the iVlountain Shade -^'—~^ustrates the often unpredictable nature of wildfires

e detroyed while adjacent ones sat untouched.

American Planning Association

WAS JUST A WISP OF SMOKE ATfirst. Crews dispatched to the rugged areaof red canyons and piñón pine on the edgeof Colorado Springs found nothing thatevening in 2012, the first day of summer.The next day, though, the smoke suddenlymushroomed, revealing a menacing blaze—one that eventually killed two people,burned 345 homes, and damaged 47 othersin the city.

The maelstrom occurred on day five.Winds of 65 mph hit Waldo Canyon, send-ing embers scudding across the crown ofa hill and streaming across fire lines bull-dozed into the red soil. Flames soared 200feet high. "Oh dear God, this is terrifying,"one Twitter message said. Soon, homes be-gan catching fire; within three hours, entireblocks were reduced to ashes and concretefoundations.

Altogether, 32,000 people were evacu-ated, some just ahead of the flames. Theyreturned to scenes of night and day, somestrips of houses untouched and others withonly brick chimneys and steel patio chairsas testaments to what once had been thegood life. Most blackened was a neighbor-hood serviced by Majestic Drive.

When finally mopped up in July, WaldoCanyon was hardly the largest fire in Colo-rado's recorded history, but it was easily themost destructive to property. Never beforehad a wildfire roared down ordinary-look-ing suburban streets.

Given the intersection of hot and dry,the high winds could have been more dev-astating yet. About 24 percent of the 650,000people in metropolitan Colorado Springslive in what is called the wildland-urbaninterface, or WUI. Recognizing the dan-ger, city officials in 2001 began aggressivelyreaching out to home owners to coax them

to remove vegetation from around houses,and in 2003 banned untreated shake shin-gles on new or replacement roofs.

City fire officials say the effort paid off,as 82 percent of homes in the fire zone werenot burned. But there was also luck of thedraw. Some slackers avoided any damage,while some of the most diligent were leftwith ashes. "Even if you do everything wetell you, you have a 50-50 chance," said a lo-cal fire official afterward.

For the Front Range of Colorado, theWaldo Canyon fire was the third disas-trous wildfire in as many months, followingfires southwest of Denver and west of FortCollins. As this magazine was going topress, yet another deadly fire was ragingnear Colorado Springs.

Growing menace

Wildfires have become larger and moredestructive in the U.S. in recent years. InMay 2012, a fire threatened 4,000 homes inCalifornia's Ventura County, north of LosAngeles. In 1985, fires on federal lands con-sumed 2.9 million acres; in 2012, they de-stroyed 9.3 million acres. Suppression costsescalated from $240 million to $1.9 billionduring that same period.

But fire experts warn that the most dam-aging and deadly wildfires are yet to come,given the wrong coincidence of circum-stances.

"When you get these catastrophic wild-fires, you just can't throw enough resourcesat them until the weather changes, the ter-rain changes, or the vegetation changes,"says Pat Kidder, chairman of the CaliforniaFire Safe Council.

Experts blame intensifying drought, ris-ing temperatures, and continued humansettlement in fire-prone ecosystems. Stateforestry officials estimated that, in 2000,nearly a quarter of Colorado's population of4.3 million people lived in WUI areas. Thestate's population is now 5.2 million.

An irony is that homes with greater riskactually tend to have higher property val-ues. Patty Champ, an economist with theU.S. Forest Service who has studied humanresponse to wildfire risks, points to a cor-relation between higher real estate valuesand proximity to dangerous terrain. "Thatisn't how real estate agents put it, but that's

the reality," she told a group at the ColoradoForest Summit last October.

Certainly, the homes burned and en-dangered hy the Waldo Canyon fire fit thatprofile. They offer luscious views of PikesPeak, a 14,000-foot mountain just a fewmiles away, and close at hand are the majes-tic sandstone spires of Garden of the Gods,which APA designated as a Great Place inAmerica in 2011.

Where are the legal tools?

In Fort Collins, one lesson drawn from lastsummer's 87,000-acre High Park fire is thatlocal governments need more legal tools.Russell Legg, the now-retired planning di-rector for Larimer County, says older sub-divisions—those built starting in the early20th century—had no requirements for re-ducing wildfire risk. State law also exemptssubdivisions of 35 acres, enough land for aBoy Scout camp.

Newer subdivisions are required tohave defensible space, but who monitorsto ensure vegetation and other flammable

WUI developmentAcross the West, 84 percent of the WUI iscurrently undeveloped. Counties shown inbrown are places where better planningand policies can have the biggest impact toreduce future firefighting cost.

COUNTY VIEW• Largely undeveloped (<20% developed)• Moderately developed (20-50% developed)

Extensively developed (>50%)Little to no WUI (<10 square miles of WUI)

SOURCE: Headwaters Economics. 2013

14 Planning July 2013

materials are not near homes?Efforts to transfer developmentrights to less risky areas haven'tpanned out, says Legg.

But some analysts say thatlocal governments might tryharder to limit WUI develop-ment if they had to bear a moreof the cost. Some 1,500 peoplebattled the High Park fire, alongwith planes ferrying slurry, he-licopters, and other tools of firesuppression. The bill reportedlyran to $38.4 million.

Cost accounting for that firemay not be completed for twoyears, local officials say, but costtypically is apportioned basedon acreages of federal, state, and local gov-ernment land involved, along with privatelands. That would, in this case, leave the fed-eral government with the biggest tab.

"We think it's expensive and dangerousnow, and you add climate change to this andit will become a much, much bigger prob-lem," says Ray Rasker, an economist and ex-ecutive director of Headwaters Economics,a think tank in Bozeman, Montana.

Burning dollarsAdjusted for inflation, Rasker says, federalwildfire costs ballooned from $1.5 billionto $3.1 billion between 1996 and 2007.An Office of the Inspector General studyin 2006 found that protection of privateproperty was identified as a major reasonfor firefighting efforts in 87 percent of largewildfires. In other words, WUI homes arethe primary cause of escalating federal fire-fighting costs.

Rasker contends that local governmentsmust be more accountable for land-use de-cisions. "The fundamental problem is thatif we don't have that incentive at the locallevel, where land-use decisions are beingmade, then where is the accountability?How do you shift it from the federal taxpay-er to the local level? That's what I'm tryingto figure out."

A 2009 study authored by Rasker identi-fied 10 strategies, including the idea of cre-ating a federal fire insurance and mortgageprogram, modeled on the one in place cov-ering floodplains.

President Barack Obama meeting with firefighters in a neighborhood of Colorado Springs,Colorado, following the devastating Waldo Canyon fire in June 2012.

Fire suppressionexpendituresby the federal government• ExpendituresI Initial fire budget

Will Toor, a former commissioner inColorado's Boulder County, also arguesthat priorities have been misplaced. "I thinkthe response has been much more aboutresources for fighting fires and forest treat-ment, with the hope that it will reduce fireintensity, and some require-ments about construction ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^in these zones. Very littlehas been about what seemsto me the most important:How much development arewe going to allow in theseareas that we know are at avery high risk of burning?"

To make his case, Toorcites two parallel fires in thefoothills west of the county'snamesake city of Boulder: A2003 fire in Lefihand Can-yon resulted in few burnedhomes, but a 2010 fire inFourmile Canyon destroyed169 homes. The difference?The first fire was almost ex-clusively on federal lands. The latter canyonhad been mined in the 19th century, result-ing in scattered parcels of private property,most with homes on them.

Yet another fire occurred west of Boul-der last summer in an area not unlike Wal-do Canyon, but development rights hadbeen removed years ago. Had building been

'10 "11 "12

SOURCE: U.S. Forest Service

allowed there, says Toor, the outcome mighthave been like that at Waldo Canyon.

However, it's not easy to crimp devel-opment in risky areas, as Toor discov-ered after the 2010 fire. Even in BoulderCounty, among the most liberal counties in

Colorado, the public had^ ^ ^ ^ ^ " no appetite for restrictions.

"You need to have this pol-icy discussion, but not im-mediately after a major fire,"he says. "You have all thesepeople whose lives havebeen turned upside down,and politically, it's almostimpossible to do anythingother than to help them re-build."

More trouble aheadFire experts warn of muchworse to come. "I don't thinkColorado has seen the worstfire yet. And I think that'strue almost everywhere,"

says Mark A. Finney, a research foresterwith the U.S. Forest Service's Fire, Fuel,and Smoke Science Program in Missoula,Montana.

Finney argues that fires in fire-proneecosystems can only be suppressed tem-porarily. Eventually, he says, there will befire—and probably fire more massive in

American Planning Association 15

scale. "We have created this experiment inattempting to remove fire in the landscape,"he says. "We are just starting to figure outhow this plays out. It doesn't play out well."

Prescribed (i.e., controlled) fires dentthe buildup of fuels, and some have blockedthe progress of giant fires. But smoke is ob-jectionable to many, and sometimes pre-scribed fires get out of control. In 2002, afire set by National Park Service employeesin New Mexico spread into Los Alamos, en-dangering nuclear materials housed at thenational laboratory and causing $1 billionin damages.

The potential for catastrophic fireshas further been enabled by epidemics ofmountain bark beetles. Some 41 millionacres of lodgepole pine have died in theWest in recent years, adding to the tinder

Summit County has been at the epicen-ter of Colorado's infestation. It's an hourwest of Denver along 1-70 and home tofour of the busiest and largest U.S. ski ar-eas. About four-fifths of the land in Sum-mit County is administered by federal landagencies. Foresters estimate 155,000 treeshave died in the county during the last de-cade as a result of beetles.

The sight of those dead and dying forestshas provoked a dramatic change in policy.Before, trees were nearly sacred. Now deadand diseased trees are being cut down tocreate fuel breaks.

In Breckenridge, the largest town inSummit County, permits were required ofanybody who wanted to cut down a tree; of-ficials feared large trees would be removedto open up views, the better to maximizereal estate values.

Since the bark beetle epidemic, though,there has been "a 180-degree reversal in at-titudes," says Peter Grosshuesch, AICP, di-rector of community development.

Ironically, Breckenridge faced push-back when it tried to force home owners tocut trees. Better received by home ownergroups has been a voluntary program, andthe town now has nine Firewise-designatedneighborhoods, the second most in the na-tion.

Now, Grosshuesch worries about theeffects of a large-scale fire on the commu-nity's watershed. After hot fires southwest ofDenver left some soils fused like a marblecountertop, runoff from a summer stormrapidly filled a major reservoir with sedi-ment. Its removal has been expensive.

Grosshuesch imagines an even worse

scenario affecting Breckenridge's small res-ervoir. Could the town be forced to truck inwater from elsewhere for several months? Aplan now in the works suggests creation ofcheck dams immediately after a fire in thedrainages with the most vulnerable soils.

Dan Gibbs, a county commissioner,points to seminal thinking in 2002, a year ofepic drought and catastrophic fires from Ar-izona to Colorado to Oregon. In response.Congress passed the Healthy Forests Res-toration Act. A key provision provided theframework for creation of local communitywildfire protection plans. The carrot offeredby Congress was the promise of grants tolocal communities who got together to pre-pare risk mitigation in local forests.

Taking action

Some community wildfire protections planshave been little more than one-page lists,says Gibbs, a former congressional aide.The one developed in Summit County is100 pages long and far more elaborate, withinvolvement of local towns, county govern-ment, Denver Water, the electrical utility,the Forest Service, and others. Locals alsoput up money for forest thinning and fuelsremoval. A county property tax approved in2008 allocates $500,000 a year.

"We look for partnerships along theway," says Gibbs. "Not one entity—not thefederal government, not the state agen-cies, not the county nor the towns—is bigenough to deal with potentially catastrophicwildfires." Virtually all of Summit County,he notes, is in the WUI, certain to have afire at some time.

Certainty of fire also was evident in 2001when Colorado Springs began its aggressiveoutreach to the 36,485 homes in the city's

WUI. "I started out in cul-de-sacs and inchurches and living rooms, talking withpeople about their wildfire risks," explainedChristina Randall, wildfire mitigation ad-ministrator for the Colorado Springs FireDepartment in a presentation at the RockyMountain Land Use Institute. Many, shesaid, had to be persuaded that fire could oc-cur.

The city began assessing wildfire risk foreach property based on 25 weighted valuesinvolving vegetation, flammability of roof-ing materials, and so on. Many residentswere apprehensive about having the infor-mation shared. "I don't want my neighborsto know," they said. City officials responded:"We want your neighbors to know." Themessage: We're all in this together.

That message was underscored by apostfire analysis of Waldo Canyon by theInsurance Institute for Business & HomeSafety. "If you are in a community wherehome spacing is close, it does take a neigh-borhood effort. It's up to you, when you'reclose to your neighbor; it's also up to yourneighbor," says Steve Ouarles, a senior sci-entist with the institute.

Quarles, who holds a doctorate in woodscience, explains that scores of the housesburned by the Waldo Canyon fire werein a more densely spaced portion of theMountain Shadows neighborhood. The firespread more rapidly from house to house,both by direct flame and radiant heat expo-sure. Some houses were only 15 feet apart.

As with many wildfires, the key ingredi-ent for the destruction in Colorado Springswas wind—and wind is not confined tosummer fires. Quarles points to January2012 fires in Reno, Nevada, that caused doz-ens of homes to burn.

FROMAPA

OTHERMEDIA

"PlanningforH//WfireTPÄ5^epört 529/53(5 isavailablefrom APÄPlänningBooks

.com. Also see "All Fired Up," in the November 2004 issue of Planning.

The Fire Adapted Communities Coalition has released a report, "Lessons fromWaldo Canyon,"and a companion video, Creating fire Adapted Communities:A Case Study from Colorado Springs and the Waldo Canyon Fire; HeadwatersEconomics's white paper and case studies on wildfire costs and wildland-urbaninterface settlement are at http://headwaterseconomics,org/wildfire/fire-research-summary. Information about wildfire mitigation is avaiiable from theInsurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, www.disastersafety.Qrg, andThe Forest Service's new report. Wildfire, Wildlands, and People:Understanding and Preparing for Wildñre in the Wildland-Urban Interface,

= is available at www.fs.fed.us/openspace/fote/wildfire-report.html.

16 Planning Juiy 2013

But the largest lesson ofWaldo Canyon may be thatadvance work pays off. Cityofficials in Colorado Springsconcluded that $300,000spent in fuels reduction atCedar Heights, the most vul-nerable neighborhood thatsomehow avoided any losses,had $77 million in benefits.

Too, the planning forevacuation conducted bycity officials succeeded, de-spite some glitches in com-munications. "We evacuatedmore than 30,000 peoplein just a few hours, and wedidn't have any issues," saidRandall. "There were no re-ports of accidents and panicsand fights."

Molly Mowery, programmanager for the Fire Adapt-ed Communities Coalition(involving federal agenciesand fire safety and insurancegroups), says a major lessonfrom Colorado Springs isthe value of a long and sus-tained effort. "Often we hearin the news about how manyhomes are being lost. We aretrying to reframe the dia-logue as to how many homesare being saved," she says.

Mowery, a planner, saysthat planners can have arole in that by influencinghow we develop buildings."We are pretty good abouthardening our homes andinfrastructure to other haz-ards, such as hurricanesand earthquakes," she says."There's no reason we can'tbe thinking the same thingwith wildfires. The resourcesare out there. It's a matter ofhow we get people to takeaction." •

Aiien Best is a Coiorado-basedwriter who specializes inenvironmentai issues. He is afrequent contributor to Planning.

Acres of trees kiiied by tiiemountain pine beetie offeredtine perfect fuel fortiiis Juiy 2011wiidfire in Montana.

American Planning Association 17

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