Fire Lives Here

- Welcome to the forest.

My name is Kiara Forester and I'm the Forest Program director for the Watershed Center.

We're here on Colorado's front range which stretches from open prairies and grasslands up canyons and creeks to the snow capped peaks of the rocky mountains along the continental divide.

This place is home to an incredible variety of wildlife and provides ample recreation opportunities and essential resources for millions of people.

But what's one of the most important forces shaping this landscape?

Fire?

In the next half hour, we'll explore the complex relationships between people, forests, and fire, and the work happening across boundaries.

And with many partners in this place that's known as a high risk fire.

She fire is a natural and important part of a healthy This is a story of people coming together across Colorado to care for our forests now and for future generations.

Over the past decade, the United States has had some of its worst wildfire years on record Millions of acres have burned and countless communities have been impacted, but we are making sure to learn from these fires.

Daniel Godwin with the USDA Forest Service helps explain - In 2020 Colorado experience, its three largest record setting wildfires all in one year.

You know, that was really a wake up call for a lot of us.

You know, some folks have have said this area was an asbestos forest, right, an area that wouldn't burn.

And since 2011 we've seen that's not the case.

And then 2020, it's really not the case - While it may come as a surprise and his team, along with the broader scientific community, agreed that one of the most important solutions to the problem of mega fires is to add planned fire to the landscape And this is not a new idea.

- Native Americans have used fires since time immemorial, and the the forest, the landscapes, they need that fire, they need it to be healthy.

And we've prevented fire from getting out there onto the landscape.

- In partnership with the Forest Service, Corina, Marshall and the many members of the Northern Colorado fire, she collaborative, are seeing the same changes in the forest.

- Forests are not as healthy as they once were.

A healthy forest needs fire.

And in the past, a natural ecological process has always been fire.

So we are experiencing these more catastrophic outcomes from wildfire because we have omitted this natural process from the landscape - Exclusion of natural fire from the landscape has jeopardized the safety of our communities, the ability of our forests to grow back after fire The water we drink and the air we breathe - Fire is a natural process and people are naturally here on the land and the trees, the grass, they don't really care what happens from a fire perspective, but people do.

We want landscapes that provide us healthy, clean drinking water.

We want landscapes where we can recreate in, whether that's hunting or fishing or mountain biking or any of these kind of things.

And so that means we want fire to do certain things out on the landscape And so, you know, that takes cooperation that takes collaboration.

- Here.

Many organizations, agencies and private landowners are working together hand in hand.

- The forest service can't do it all itself in this landscape because we have a patchwork or mosaic of land ownership type So in many areas there are private or state lands intermixed into the forest service, but fires don't stop at boundaries And so we need that to be contiguous across all land ownership types.

- Fire lives here and it is a natural occurrence on the land, but over the past century, we have been obstructing this natural process.

So what are we doing to correct this How do we make our forests and communities resilient to wildfire Prior to fire suppression, our lower elevation forests received fire more frequently.

So fires typically stayed on the ground These fires removed smaller trees and surface fuels which have accumulated Now, when fire arrives, it is more likely to climb into the forest canopy because of the younger more flammable trees and surface fuels combined with longer fire seasons, more frequent warm periods and extended drought, the likelihood of high severity wildfire has increased which puts our communities water and forests at risk.

In my role at the Watershed Center, I work with communities to protect what they value in the places that they love.

And our communities know that fire is a year round part of life here.

As winter sets in and snow covers the forest floor it creates the perfect conditions for burning piles.

These piles are made up of wooden brush that crews have collected by hand And machine burning piles in the winter is a safe and effective way to reduce wildfire risk And it sets the stage for broader prescribed fire.

In the spring, the first step to a resilient forest starts with thinning, which changes the structure of the forest.

So that fire is more likely to stay on the ground.

Crews work throughout the year to remove trees, which they often build into piles, then they wait for the right conditions to burn them The Forest service in cooperation with many local and regional organizations all work together in the depths of winter to start pile burning.

- So fire season is, is a bit of an antiquated term.

We talk more about fire years, but for me, this is the beginning of a very busy pile season and something I look forward to personally.

Hopefully, depending on the winter and how, how much snow we get and where it is at the right times, we could accomplish tens of thousands of piles for a couple thousand acres potentially So that's the goal.

- Evan and his team are one crew of dozens who are working across the front to conduct pile burning, all in aim of reducing the intensity and severity of wildfire.

- If we're able to to finish this and the project's adjacent to it, we can connect all that work together and, and it, it could make a difference as early as this summer if we have a fire in this area, and this is a road that we need to use as a control line.

- On the Colorado front range fire managers spend years planning and preparing for prescribed fire, which can include creating control lines and thinning the forest in the burn area These burns are carefully coordinated with local partners and across many agencies, but even with years of planning and preparation, these burns can only happen during a short window when everything lines up.

Fuel conditions, weather and crew availability all must be just right in order to ignite on the Colorado front range You may have seen smoke from prescribed burns throughout the year, typically taking place in the spring and fall.

Fire crews meticulously plan and prepare for prescribed burns and they understand that seeing fire and smoke can stir up strong emotions for community members.

So they work hand in hand with partners to communicate with the public, - Those conducting the burns have decades of wildfire experience and knowledge Mike Smith, a along serving wildland firefighter, explains their approach - Yeah, generally we will start at the top of a slope and then slowly burn down the hill because fire wants to move up.

So we just control the fire as it moves down in thin little strips And as we get further and further as we get a bigger buffer, we can take a little bit bigger bites but it's all about keeping the fire behavior within the objectives that we want to make sure that we're consuming the debris and the materials that we want to all the different prescription objectives We really wanna make sure we're meeting 'em.

And we do that through application of fire in an appropriate way.

- But why can't we just cut trees without conducting prescribed burns?

The key lies on the forest floor - Prescribed fire is a very important step in mitigation because it removes and changes surface fuels.

So when you think about a wildfire, you may have an image of fire running through the canopy but when we are doing prescribed fire we most often are thinking about the grasses and shrubs, the surface fuels that grow back readily, they're adapted to fire so they become healthier and more diverse when we have prescribed fire on the landscape.

But also, this is what really helps fire move across the landscape in a low severity way.

- Forest managers have spent years planning and implementing a strategic approach which links wildfire treatments, including thinning and prescribed fire across boundaries - We know that fire in some ways moves like water.

So if you've got, if you think of like the water table you might play with at a children's museum and water's flowing downhill and you put the blocks in it, and if you've just got little random blocks here and there, it'll just flow right around it.

But if you're able to connect those that actually changes the flow of the water.

And so working with our partners, we've gone through the process of taking these potential operational delineations, these, these blocks out on the landscape that we've identified, and we want to link these together, both north and south and with depth.

What that ends up looking like is something we've been calling the ribbon - Within this ribbon strategy, thinning pile burning and prescribed fire all play a crucial role by removing fuels that have built up in key locations for fire suppression.

Often along ridge lines, roads, and natural barriers after mechanical thinning reduces the density of trees.

Pile burning is used to remove wood and brush.

Prescribed fire is then used to maintain these areas over time and mimic natural fire cycles.

Together these actions help create contiguous, tactically placed areas where wildfire risk is reduced, making it easier for firefighters to manage active wildfires.

This strategy takes years to implement but makes all the difference.

As the heat of the summer approaches as the weather changes, fire conditions can quickly become more dangerous with drier fuels and stronger winds That's when our work with communities and agencies starts to pay off.

- Dispatch.

This is red eye flight 1700 We have visible smoke and flame send ground personnel - Breaking right now.

Mandatory evacuations are in place for people living in parts of Larimer County.

As a wildfire burns near the big Thompson Canyon.

- On the afternoon of July 29th, 2024 Mike Smith was one of the first responders to the rapidly developing Alexander Mountain Fire.

The large blaze was bearing down on community of Storm Mountain.

- I got a call from the North zone FML asking if I would be willing to take over as a type three incident commander As soon as I headed out of the office, it was pretty clear that they had a pretty substantial - Wildfires in the mountains can be started by lightning strikes, but on this day there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

- It broke out on July 29th.

On a Monday, I got a message from my wife that said, get up here, there's smoke.

- I came out on the deck and was looking at the beautiful surrounding area, blue skies, and I looked over to the north and there was what appeared to be a cloud touching the ground, you know, and I was like, I watched it a moment and realized that's not a cloud, that's smoke - Fighting.

The Alexander Mountain fire was challenging due to the extremely rugged terrain and high winds.

The fire crews face this challenge head on.

- We had winds blowing out of the east and basically blowing the fire uphill in some areas and then topping out and spotting over ridges pretty aggressively.

So we were seeing spotting distances of about a quarter mile.

So embers were being blown out in front of the fire and starting additional fires.

- Over 600 personnel were deployed to the fire with vast ground and aerial support working around the clock to protect homes and infrastructure Homeowners that were evacuated could only look on anxiously waiting for news.

- The, you know, the satellite hotspots showed the, the fire moving over our property hotspots directly on our house.

We had neighbors who had, could not see our house because of all the smoke from the other side with binoculars they couldn't see And the fire had stopped, but didn't know if our house stood And then we got the call from the firefighter who said, I'm on your deck And that was a good feeling.

Yeah, that's good.

- Hot and windy weather drove the Alexander Mountain fire to rapidly expand to over 9,000 acres before crews were able to contain it On August 17th, - What we're seeing is fire do things that we've not seen do before.

At the beginning of my career, a 50,000 acre was a big fire and a hundred thousand acre was almost unimaginable.

And now that's just commonplace acreage We're seeing so many more homes being impacted by fire, and that's one of the real concerns because operationally it's not just the fire that we're looking at, but it is all the other impacts.

And it's not just first order effects, but the fire is doing.

But it's also second and third order effects.

What's what's gonna be the impact a year down the road and five years down the road?

If we burn up a watershed, then we're looking at sedimentation problems.

If we burn up some of these mountain canyons, we're looking at mudslides and road closures that can have big, long-term, very expensive impact on our community writ large.

- The Alexander Mountain Fire left a heavy mark on Storm Mountain.

A number of structures were lost, but many were saved.

- Some of our takeaways from the Alexander Mountain Fire are that home hardening and defensible space really work.

We unfortunately lost some structures and large structures that had done mitigation and prepared for wildfire prepared to evacuate were - Saved.

Dan France is a homeowner in the Storm Mountain community.

He and his wife have lived there for decades and experienced multiple wildfire evacuations.

His efforts to build defensible space around his home is a testament to the success that these efforts can have on protecting a home.

But he still does not take his success lightly.

- Forgive me, I can be very long-winded about this.

It's okay.

But the work that we've done started when we bought the land and when we bought the land, we were al already thinking about fire danger.

And then within a year, then there was a fire here.

Kathy and I simply enjoy nature and it's not as predictable up here Life is just not as predictable up here We, we share this with, with all the animals, and we share it with the risk of 'cause fire, as much as it's devastating, it's part of the, it's part of the equation And we never got arrogant about that We were, we were always humbled by mother nature.

- Walking through an area burned by wildfire can teach us valuable lessons This is Mike Bataglia job as a research forester.

He visits the Alexander Mountain Fire shortly after containment to assess the impacts - When I walk into a, the, a forest did stand that had just burned by a wildfire, I'll look at, you know the different fire effects that may have occurred right there in that spot.

But I'm also considering what's going on across the landscape, across that burn perimeter - A key part in understanding a wildfires behavior and impacts is looking at the history of our forests and fire.

- These areas right here in this elevation, fires burned on average before pre-European settlement every 20 to 50 years.

So these areas have missed several cycles of fire.

- Forest managers rely on research from scientists like Mike to inform how they manage lands to effectively reduce the negative impacts of wildfire.

- You can see that the forest service came here and cut a lot of these smaller trees that have come in due to fire ex exclusion.

And they cut these trees.

The forest service cut these trees so that when a fire would come through the technically, that it would take more energy for the fire to go from the ground into the crown So now we have this more open area, less fuels.

They took that biomass, they, they thinned those little trees and piled them and burned them.

So there was less surface fuels through that fire to, to catch, to increase that intensity So this would be a, a really good success story.

- A bird's eye view reveals spots where the fire was high severity, visibly dark and charred, as well as spots where the fire was low severity with canopies that are still green, this is known as the fire mosaic.

And to Mike, it is a positive sight - When you look at this one spot and you, you know, you're turning around and everywhere is dead.

That's really concerning when you're just sitting here.

But when you, when you pull back into the landscape and you see, well, this is just one isolated area across a much larger footprint of, this doesn't concern me there's just isolated areas.

And so that actually is important because we want a mosaic of different densities out there.

And we also want a mosaic of different developmental stages.

These forests, these ponderosa pine forests were uneven age, multi-age.

So they had different age classes in there, so they weren't all susceptible to all the disturbances.

So in an intact fire regime, the fire will only impact the smaller trees, and the big trees aren't suppose have this large mortality.

The difference is, is this is not operating in an intact fire regime So we have taken fire outta the system We have the densities in these forests to get two to three times more than it should And that's why when we do have fires they get up into the crowns and kill the trees.

Whereas in the past when we did have a intact fire regime, not as many trees, the fires would just burn on the surface.

And you always had continuous tree cover and a mosaic of different developmental stages in the forest.

- This mosaic was created because of a mix of homeowner actions and public lands management, which helped make what could have been a more catastrophic wildfire, easier to fight and contain.

So where do we go from here?

What have we ultimately learned from the Alexander Mountain Fire and from the actions taken throughout the year to make our forests and communities more fire adapted?

That fire is a necessity.

- Ramping up the amount of fire on the landscape can seem scary.

I get that.

You know, I've been evacuated I've had people evacuated to my home There is really no scenario in the future where there's not more fire on the landscape.

It's either fire on our terms or fire under conditions that we don't want it to be there.

There was actually never a no fire option Part of the problem is that we tried to impose a no fire option onto the landscape, and it's blowing back on us now.

This is a landscape, this is a planet that needs and thrives with fire.

- The Forest service cannot tackle this challenge alone.

A landscape scale strategy requires cooperation from homeowners and community connected partners to county open space and federal lands A future with fire is inevitable but a future where communities and forests are prepared for and resilient to wildfire.

That is a future we can build together - When the public is seeing wildfire mitigation treatments in their area, whether that's thinning in the forest or prescribed fire, we'd love for the public to be engaged and aware of those projects and know that they are for both the safety of their recreation, their community, their drinking, water air quality, all of the above.

Sometimes the public sees trees being cut and doesn't know why and jumps to the conclusion that maybe something bad is happening or we're logging the forest.

But rather we are looking to create more of a healthy forest, a healthy ecosystem restoring prescribed fire, bringing that fire, that ecological process back to the landscape.

And we're really trying to do this in concert across all these different land ownerships in order to make everyone safer and to protect the Colorado forests that we love.

- The mountains, forests and streams of Colorado are beautiful This is the reason many of us live here But that beauty comes with risk - For some people, the, the image of a mountain cabin is completely surrounded by trees with the, with the, with the wind blowing through the treetops and being in the shade and cool.

And this house is not that.

I think a cabin in the woods is, is a, a dream that's worth having It's balancing that, that image of a cabin with the risk that is inherent in having such - Every dream of a cabin in the woods, must come with a bird's eye view of the forest surrounding it.

Wildfire can threaten what we love most about Colorado, places to recreate clean air and water and forests that can survive and thrive after wildfire.

Fire lives here, like the rain and the wind.

We must prepare for it by caring for our properties, working with our neighbors and supporting public lands.

Join us and become part of a community, saving our forests for future generations.