For a world class ski town, Aspen has a ‘quite high’ risk of burnover

Aspen and its surrounding Roaring Fork Valley communities are famous destinations for vacationers, skiers, and outdoor enthusiasts. 

One thing visitors might miss when they visit is that the communities in the valley are at a “quite high” risk of experiencing a burnover like was seen in Paradise, California, or in the Marshall Fire, according to Angie Davlyn, RFV Wildfire Collaborative executive director.

The valley, almost in its entirety, is a part of the Wildland Urban Interface. The WUI is defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology as the “area where human development … meets or intermixes with undeveloped wildlands.” 

Almost a century of rampant wildfire suppression — coupled with a warming planet inducing years of drought-like conditions and extreme fire weather — has led to a massive accumulation of fuels in our forests, making the valley a high risk area. 

A Wildfire Risk Viewer map maintained by the Colorado State Forest Service (a forest management service operated through Colorado State University), shows the valley region as having, on average, a moderate- to high-burn probability, and much of that land is expected to burn at a high intensity, which is often unresponsive to firefighting measures.

“We’ve chosen to build our homes in a highly-forested area,” Davlyn said. “We’ve got climate aspects, too, where we live in a place that’s a bit hotter and drier, and a lot of places in the valley are quite windy, and then there’s steep slope. And so those factors combined make our area at quite a high risk.”

Protections

Houses and property in the valley may be at risk, but that doesn’t mean they’re doomed. 

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in an April 2 meeting with Colorado College students that building materials “still matter” but said the “bigger issue is going to be fuel.” 

Polis said defense barriers around communities and around homes are more important.

Davlyn, however, believes that there needs to be more of a mix between wildfire resistant buildings and their surroundings. 

“I think we got very lucky with the fires that we’ve seen here in the valley recently, including Lake Christine and Grizzly Creek,” she said. “We lost some homes in the Lake Christine Fire, and it was just amazing that we didn’t see more damage and destruction from that. And I don’t know how many times we can keep getting lucky during a wildfire.”

Despite this, Felix Tornare, a regenerative rancher who owns a ranch in the WUI above Carbondale, has gone through extensive efforts to defend his property. When asked what his evacuation plan was, he was confident he had done enough.

“I wouldn’t,” Tornare said about evacuating. “I’m ready. I will be. Last time with Basalt Mountain (fire), we were supposed to do that or work on it. And I’m like, ‘I’m staying here to protect what’s here, which I can because I have the resources of solid water and green pastures that will be safe.’ I feel like our house will be safe, easy, and defendable.”

In part that’s because of his ranching practices. 

He uses regenerative farming, a practice that bolsters soil health and moisture and favors native, often wildfire resilient grasses in his pastures that surround his stucco, metal-roofed house.

“We’ve had a pretty dry spring up here, where the snow has been going out of the field in March, which doesn’t usually happen. So we could potentially have a pretty dry summer,” he said. “What we’ve been doing for the last three, four years, should really help us keep us green.”

The Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office, however, urges displacement if a mandatory evacuation order is put in place. But they can’t make people leave. 

Under the right conditions, it doesn’t matter how your house is built or what resources you have in place to defend your property, according to Sheriff’s Office Deputy of Operations Parker Lathrop.

“We try to tell people, if everything else, house, cars, belongings, that stuff can be replaced,” he said. “It’s the lives that can’t be.”

Most people, however, likely don’t have healthy, green pastures surrounding their wildfire resilient houses. The communities in the valley are often dense, and building codes don’t include everything that needs to be done to make houses as resilient as possible.

“All of our communities here in the valley are quite close together,” Davlyn said. “When one home is on fire, it puts all of the homes around it at risk. So any home within 60, 70 feet of another home has a high likelihood of burning down.”

According to her, that’s most of the neighborhoods in the valley. Almost the entire valley is surrounded with high-burn-intensity forests, many of them are primed for a wildfire. 

“I think every single home in our entire valley, Aspen to Glenwood, should treat it as if it’s at a high risk of a wildfire and should do everything they can to improve their home,” she said.

Getting out

Despite the inherent risk, the evacuation system in the valley is rudimentary compared to the complexity of the neighborhoods. According to the Wildfire Risk Viewer, many neighborhoods have poor egress and ingress, making it difficult to evacuate on short notice as well as difficult for first responders to make it to you.

According to an Aspen Public Service Announcement, it could take up to 15 hours to evacuate the town, a much longer time than it took the 2021 Marshall Fire to burn over 1,000 homes and businesses.

“A challenge with that is not just getting the people out, but sometimes getting the people in to help notify an evacuation,” Lathrop said. “Also in those same areas, we have those one way in one way out areas, we often don’t have cell phones (numbers for inhabitants).”

Because of this, it is important that WUI inhabitants have wildfire awareness and defendable properties and egress routes, say others who focus on the issue. 

According to Connor Coleman, the owner of Resiliency Lands, an organization that promotes ecological resiliency, people who recently moved to the valley have an obligation to become aware of the local wildfire environment.

“To be a successful member of our community, people need to ask how they can play their part in being a member of the solution,” Coleman said.

One problem that still requires a solution is the intensifying wildfires and wildfire seasons that are plaguing the West.

“There’s no question that weather patterns are shifting, that our fire seasons are getting significantly longer, more volatile, and unpredictable,” he said. “Without a doubt, we can say things are changing … the reality is things are changing, and regardless of the cause, we need to be aware of it.”

For information on your property, visit http://www.rfvwildfire.org, firewise.org, or aspenfire.com to request a mitigation assessment.