Wildfire Public Safety & Mitigation Project - A Fire Protection District’s Perspectives

• Funding Barriers for Residents: (6 interviewees) The agency sees there are bigger challenges with getting funds for homeowners to contract wildfire mitigation work than challenges with resident’s desire to do the work; especially challenging is to get the word out about current, small sources of funding/diversifying those funds across the landscape’s needs (e.g. FPD offers financial match to Wildfire Partner’s funds but a program not many have accessed; contractor work is very expensive, especially for elderly populations on fixed incomes).

• Lack of Wildfire Mitigation/Restoration Project Knowledge: (5 interviewees) The agency sees the community’s lack of knowledge around wildfire risk reduction and ecological restoration, especially regarding some resident’s desire to keep current “natural” high tree densities, their support for one-and-done thinning practices rather than continual ecological restoration introducing prescribed fire, their distrust in agencies (e.g. lack of understanding why USFS leaves slash piles) and hesitancy to do home wildfire mitigation with misconception they would have to cut down all their trees.

  “I think the prescribed fire piece has a little bit less support [than thinning tree management].... There’s, maybe, the common misconceptions of ‘you’re gonna smoke me out’ or you know, ‘it’s gonna get out of control’, any of that stuff that is a legitimate concern, but there’s maybe less understanding of why you would do prescribed fire versus thinning trees.”

• Lack of Motivation for Home & Large Scale Wildfire Mitigation Projects: (5 interviewees) The agency sees a lack of motivation from homeowners/the public to do home mitigation or support large scale mitigation projects since it conflicts with their mountain aesthetic values and property resale profits, and/or residents won’t take public safety responsibility or follow through on recommendations without the fire district’s leading hand, and there are sometimes strong objections to “logging” type practices of public forests.

  “I see that if the fire department is not doing mitigation and pushing for those projects, it’s hard to convince homeowners to do it.”

• Reliance on Agency to Save Their Home During Wildfires: (4 interviewees) The agency experiences resident expectations to rely on the FPD to save their home during a wildfire, and there is still a strong need to educate the public about evacuation and firefighter priorities during a wildfire (e.g. wildfire incident calls are about saving lives first and foremost, not structures).

  “I have them [residents in community meetings] raise their hand if they have done any mitigation…. And then I say ‘now raise your hand if you think your house is more important than a firefighter’s life?’...But quite honestly, that was the old sentiment that the firefighters was going to stand in between that 30 foot wall of flames coming toward your house and somewhat magically save your house and not care about their own lives.”

• Overinflated Public Lands Ownership & Attribution of Wildfire Risk Responsibility on Agency: (3 interviewees) The agency sees there may be an overinflation of the public’s sense of ownership over public lands and management, and a singular attribution of wildfire risk reduction responsibility on wildfire agencies and public lands (e.g. public often asks what the city is doing about wildfire risk reduction but not as reflective on their own power to make their homes more resilient).

• Barriers to Scale-up Wildfire Mitigation Projects: (3 interviewees) The agency sees significant barriers to their ability to scale up their wildfire mitigation projects with growing housing densities and connecting many, small privately owned properties on a single project (e.g. barriers to landowner-to-landowner collaborations on cost and equipment sharing on projects across 50-70 owners to increase project scale).

• Crew Non-permanence Interferes with Building Wildfire Mitigation Programs: (6 interviewees) Strong agency recognition that nonpermance and seasonality of crew and staff interfere with the ability to build/maintain the capacity, expertise, community education and engagement momentum, and funding needed for productive wildfire mitigation projects (e.g. aging and new resident/green populations hard to maintain as volunteers, all volunteers require to have basic training above wildland mitigation, and constantly retraining new folks each year)

  “Everyone would agree that there is a need to educate the homeowners - there is time needed to educate the homeowners….When I think of other fire districts that don’t have paid staff, who does that fall to? Now you are asking a volunteer position to put in time and effort towards getting their district residents educated.”

• Volunteer Time is Already at Capacity: (4 interviewees) Volunteer fire protection districts are at full capacity with the multifaceted priorities they have to accomplish that there is no room to add wildfire mitigation as a key priority which requires thousands of hours to initiate and maintain, including engaging homeowners (e.g. answering medical call, structure fires, attending training).

  “ I would love to say hey we can take care of all the homes up here [in terms of home mitigation], but again, our station… it still does 911 response, so we can’t do this full time; hence that’s why we try to bring on seasonals to do a lot of this.”

• Volunteers Held to Same Standard as Paid Agencies: (3 interviewees) Volunteer departments are held to same qualification and reporting standards as paid FD and agencies, but do not have same caliber of training, which can interfere with being fully qualified to protect communities during a wildfire or have a wildfire mitigation project.

• Need for Coordinated Planning & Implementing of Wildfire Mitigation Project: (8 interviewees) Strong agency recognition of the need for coordinated and centralized wildfire mitigation planning, project and network information consolidation, and project implementation across districts and agencies (e.g. meetings that go beyond roundtable discussions and actual plan cross jurisdictional projects)

  “There needs to be three C’s for success: Communication, Collaboration and Coordination. Fire service folks are atrocious at these”

• Reduced Efficacy to Improve Public Safety & Wildfire Mitigation Projects In Partnerships: (6 interviewees) The partnership between the FD and other agencies is not productive or efficacious for improving public safety or initiating wildfire mitigation projects for the FPD due to partner’s lag times, disorganized or non collaborative leadership (e.g. previous chiefs “thought they were better than other FPDs”), and physical distance between project areas.

• Specific Avoidance of Partners Due to Slow Wildfire Mitigation Project Implementation: (3 interviewees) The agency intentionally avoids or pursues wildfire mitigation projects/plans with less collaborators due to the slow processes (often in federal or state governmental processes) that interfere with more rapid project implementation.

• Poor Partner Communication/Investment in Community: (2 interviewees) The agency has witnessed poor partner communication around large scale projects and/or seen a lack of time investment in residents’ home mitigation desires and meetings

• Lack of Usable Equipment to Scale Up Projects: (7 interviewees) The agency or public has a lack of usable and current equipment (heavy equipment, sort yards), funds to maintain/purchase, and space to house equipment to scale up or initiate wildfire mitigation projects (e.g. have some old equipment that is intended for structure fires that happens to overlap with mitigation).

• Needed Equipment for Public Wildfire Safety: (3 interviewees) The agency recognizes there is a lack of firefighting and resource equipment to ensure optimal public safety during a wildfire event.

• Collective Responsibility of Wildfire Mitigation & Risk Reduction: (5 interviewees) The role of wildfire mitigation in Boulder County is seen as a collective, equal responsibility across homeowners, partner agencies, fire districts, policy makers, the city and county (e.g. homeowners initiating their own education with FD supplemental support, role of land stewardship as well as wildfire risk reduction in hands of homeowners and government agencies).

  “...the base responsibility and signing up for “yes, let’s do this” comes from the property owner. Even here, where we have a wildfire mitigation crew, I cannot go on someone’s property without them saying yes.”

• Agency Can be Wildfire Mitigation Lead if Right Conditions Exist: (5 interviewees) The role of wildfire mitigation is part of the key responsibilities of fire protection districts if the right conditions exist (e.g. larger districts can justify wildfire mitigation crews on hand with continual projects, if there were funding for a full time outreach and engagement employee for each district).

• Agency Depends on Residents & Fire Cycles for Wildfire Mitigation Funds: (3 interviewees) The agency is largely dependent on residents to increase mill levies through votes and/or dependent on funding coming in cycles aligned with local wildfire incidences to support mitigation projects (e.g. does not want to lean on local systems to raise mill levies again once they have already been raised a few years earlier).

  “[community and funding motivation] ebs and flows with what is going on in the news, or if there is a big event. You know, people tend to forget about it relatively quickly, and that’s when you should be working on your defensible space, not when the winds are blowing 100 mph”

• Barriers with Time Restraints on Wildfire Mitigation Grants: (2 interviewees) The agency experiences restraints on the pace and types of wildfire mitigation projects they can pursue due to the short time restraints on grants

  “Some of the bigger grants, you can hire people. But then it is only good for 2-3 years, so then, what do you do? You know, I’m looking at not just a 1-2 year program, I am looking at a 5-10 year [program] for sustainability….I’d rather go slow to go fast…. Do it right and collaborate with as many folks as we can.”

• Pressure to Diversify Funds to Maintain Wildfire Mitigation Projects: (2 interviewees) The agency feels the incredible pressure to diversify funding sources and continually obtain grant funding to initiate or maintain wildfire mitigation projects

  “Not just workforce needs, but also need to get grants. We are not trying to make money but just to cover costs of seasonal pay and to offer full benefits and pay for the year. Trying to entice people.”

• Wildfire Mitigation Funding Tradeoffs: (2 interviewees) The agency and board make substantial tradeoffs between maintaining wildfire mitigation projects and losing funding for the FD on these projects.

• Confusion & Disagreement on Regulations: (3 interviewees). The agency reports being confused or disagreeing with regulations and how these regulations are set and implemented (e.g. confusion on less conservative fire bans in dry seasons, air quality standards based on proximity to annual chipping sites that restrict essential burn permits for the entire year, potential senate bill that would limit pile burning to FD but put extreme burden and workforce on FPD).

• Need for Certifiable/Standardized Home Ignition Zones: (3 interviewees) Strong agency desire to have certifiable/standardized home ignition zone across the state and fire districts in order to feel more confident recommending/implementing wildfire mitigation on private property and to be able to communicate/be aligned/shape what insurance agencies view are acceptable mitigation practices.

  “Something that has been a bane of wildfire existence is standardizing terms. For instance, what is defensible space? What’s zone 1, what’s zone 2, what’s zone 3? You know, because there’s been different literature that comes out from different sources…how do we sing off the same hymn book?”

• Challenges Finding & Maintaining Qualified Crew: (3 interviewees) The agency has had challenges finding and/or maintaining qualified crews each year, often attributed to unrealistic applicant expectations, potential generational/COVID impacts on lower work morale but higher desired pay, seasonality and low base pay rate of the work, needed proximity to Boulder but inability to live in the area.

• Changes Needed to Training & Incentives: (2 interviewees) The agency recognizes the need to adjust training (e.g. require more accountability for reaching benchmarks, hold “try-outs”) and offer greater incentives (e.g after 1-month offer pay increase).

Explore these four successful agency models that help fire districts retain volunteers/paid wildfire mitigation crew members, connect partners and homeowners, maintain updated CWPPs, and diversify funding sources.

• Ways to Scale Up Acreage/Partnerships: The agency recommends scaling up partnerships and amount of acreage covered in wildfire mitigation projects through:

  1) a funded, full time position to work with all 28 FPD and other agencies to coordinate projects, manage and collaborate to obtain funds, find mutually beneficial project goals. Ideally this position would be centralized through Boulder County or the state and would be familiar with current, successful FD structures by attending current fire chief meetings and getting to know each player (e.g. funded through new wildfire mitigation funds passed through Congress)

  2) a shared collaboration map & project detail scope (e.g. projected cost, timeline) that allows FD and other unique, unexpected partners (e.g. Denver Water) to focus on smaller project boundaries to identify adjacent partners

  3) Capitalize on current sawyer teams, like through the City’s sawyers

  4) Continue ongoing round table discussions, but with a smaller number of stakeholders present (e.g. 5 instead of 20) to focus on adjacent project development, collaborative grant writing, and to identify challenges at specific site level needing to address (e.g. which specific landowners may be on board)

  5) Encourage a more casual way to contact/easily call up fire groups in neighboring districts to maintain updates and brainstorm new project boundaries.

• Sharing Workforce, Hiring and Training Practices: The agency recommends sharing workforce, hiring and/or training practices, including having singular hiring systems, joint chainsaw and chipper trainings with neighbor agencies, trainings offered to volunteer districts from paid FD, or even sharing cross-jurisdictional, larger crews that can be hired for weeks at a time.

  “I do feel that workforce capacity can be shared…we all share our resources to take fire assignments, I would love to see the exact same group of cooperators collaborate on mitigation projects. I think we could all accomplish more with a very large crew….it'd be a nonzero sum.”

• Sharing Intellectual & Organizational Resources: The agency discusses ways to share intellectual and organizational resources, such as:

  1) FD’s hosting ecological restoration crew leadership trainings to understand multi-objective mitigation planning (e.g. understand where birds nest may be present)

  2) FD’s hosting trainings/workshop to share how others recruit (e.g. pay rate, advertisement practices), hire, train and maintain qualified wildfire mitigation crew members

  3) Potentially sharing physical assets, through bartering of large equipment for labor/rentals, Boulder County’ purchase, maintenance and storage of heavy equipment for rent or trained operators of this equipment to contract out

• Supports to Build & Maintain Networks: The agency mentions ways to build and maintain cross-jurisdictional communication and learning networks, including having:

  1) A centralized webpage with meeting notes and materials from all partner meetings

  2) Conducting a social network analysis to identify all the current meetings, overlaps in stakeholders present and ways to make the system more efficient.

• Increase Prescribed Fire Opportunities: The agency strongly recommends finding as many opportunities (e.g. cattail burns) for prescribed fire that increase collaborative trust, build networks, give training experience, improve ecological benefits, reduce wildfire risk and get the public more used to smoke in the air

• Prioritize Outreach/Education Content and Timing of Education: The agency recommends targeting content (for mitigation, focusing on ecological restoration and prescribed fire in addition to wildfire risk reduction, for public safety, emphasizing the shared responsibility to protect life and structures, having resident’s identify their home in an evacuation/triage sheets, ensuring short and long term rentals have an evacuation plan/communication) and offering year-round education (e.g. not just following wildfire incidents)

• Specialize Outreach/Education to the Focal Community: The agency mentions offering community wildfire mitigation education specialized to the district that captures challenges of those communities and offers face to face interaction with FD crew, with help from the watershed groups (e.g. field trips to past burn scars or future slash pile burns in the area).

  “If we are mitigating somebody’s property, we always try to have someone there to answer questions. Because now all of a sudden the neighbors come over and say ‘well I have this beautiful tree, do I have to take it out?’ and we say ‘ no you don’t but we can give you some ideas”, whether you limb it up, whether you clean your gutters, you know, anything….And the big thing is to show them the before and after pictures. We are not there to clear cut.”

• Amplify and Capitalize on Public's Trust in the Agency: The agency recommends the FD and FD partners should capitalize on the public’s trust in the FD to educate on forest ecology and wildfire mitigation more efficiently and effectively, and to build this trust through obtaining more federal funds.

• Setting up Unique Funding Structures/Diversified Funding: The agency mentions setting up unique funding structures or tapping into diversified funding sources to initiate/maintain wildfire mitigation programs, like:

  1) Starting wildfire mitigation programs with a fee for wood chipping services after homeowner does/contracts own mitigation

  2) Setting up 50/50% cost shares between FD and Wildfire Partners

  3) Discovering or promoting small homeowner grants, especially for elderly populations on fixed income

  4) As a FD, update CWPP to be eligible for Federal funds

• Finding, Coordinating & Managing Grants with Partners: The agency recommends finding, coordinating and managing wildfire mitigation grants by identifying and collaborating closely with unexpected partners, like the watershed groups and other for and non-profit partners (e.g. United Power, Denver Water).

• Training on Grants and Grant Access: The agency mentions the importance of being able to attend trainings/presentations on grant writing tips and tricks (e.g. cash matches, finding collaborators to write together), which grants are accessible and when, and wildfire mitigation program and funding structures that have evolved and become self-sustaining, offered by partners like BWC and the other FDs

• Creating a Specialized Volunteer/Paid Position as Community Educator & Engagement: The agency strongly recommends creating a specialized of volunteer or paid position for each FD that is the key community educator by diversifying who the FD recruits from the community

  “Everyone agrees that educating homeowners is important on their role - but without even a partially paid staff to do this, who does it fall to? So potentially a volunteer position at a FPD that is solely just education but what does this entail - community meetings, mailings, website - maybe looking at wrong set of volunteers to do this task if asking those who volunteer based on medical response calls (diversifying WHAT volunteers can do and who you ask to be on FD volunteer) - where are the educators in the community that we can tap into already” (Mike)

• Supports to Creating More Permanent, Qualified Crews: The agency strongly recommends adjusting FD structures to support the permanence/year to year transfer of qualified wildfire mitigation and wildfire public safety crew members, through:

  1) Recruiting and paying Type I incident responders more who are naturally interested in pursuing more structured wildfire mitigation work

  2) Offer pay raises for those who meet that season’s training benchmarks or who have more qualifications/experience from previous years in the FD/on that crew

  3) Offering more year-round positions and holistically assessing what the crew could do to help the agency the rest of the year (e.g. county trail maintenance, offering EMT/first aid trainings)

  4) Offer shared, cross-jurisdictional crew housing in Boulder for the season

  5) Offering cost of living stipends

• Amplify Agency Input & General Creation of Standardized Home Ignition Zone Practices: The agency strongly recommends having processes in place (e.g. a coordinated county wildfire mitigation project position) to standardize the home ignition zone recommendations that align with insurance agencies, and across all FDs in the county.

• Amplify Agency Input on Policy Changes: The agency recommends pivotal ways their input could be integrated into both county level (e.g. helping inform standardized state building codes, informing county fire ban levels), and federal wildfire protection decision making (e.g. supporting legislation for a new ‘Wildfire Mitigation’ funded program, separate from allocated FPD funding).