Earth Protect Blog

By Mark Harden

Columnist for The Denver Post

The news out of Hawaii has been deeply tragic. The Maui disaster is already the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, and the island’s death toll continues to rise, with hundreds still missing.

And the cluster of fires that broke out on Aug. 8 all but erased Lahaina, one of America’s most picturesque and historic towns. As I discovered when I visited years ago, Lahaina was a magical place where you could stroll Front Street and watch the sunset over the neighboring islands or visit landmarks from Lahaina’s days as a royal capital, a missionary center, and a shore-leave destination for rowdy whalers.

But beyond the tragedy, the Lahaina horror offers lessons for us in Colorado, where we are no strangers to devastating wildfires and where we now realize that the flames can strike communities we once thought were safe. It’s a warning siren.

It didn’t take long for officials to note similarities between the Lahaina blaze and the Marshall Fire that swept through Original Town Superior, Louisville and other parts of Boulder County in December 2021, destroying more than 1,000 structures and leaving two dead.

“It reminds me very much of the fire that we saw in Boulder, Colorado, at the end of 2021, where an entire community was burned to the ground, spread by excessive winds, like we’re seeing from this fire,” Deanna Criwswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN.

Both fires struck communities surrounded by grassy terrain, not timbered areas long associated with wildfires. Both were propelled by hurricane-force winds that drove the flames rapidly. Both were enhanced by drought conditions. In both cases, emergency warning systems were inadequate, leaving many people with little time to react. And both stretched available firefighting resources beyond their capacity.

The West has always been threatened by wildfire. The Lahaina and Marshall fires, among others, show us that the threat is growing and evolving.

There have been 12 wildland fires with 20 or more fatalities in U.S. history, including Lahaina, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Half of them struck more than a century ago, generally in heavily timbered areas far from major cities.

After 1918, for almost a century, there were only two U.S. wildfires with more than 20 deaths as the nation became more urban and building practices and firefighting capabilities improved. But that trend of lower risk shifted in recent years. In just six years since 2017, there have been four U.S. wildland fires with 20 or more fatalities, including California’s 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and devastated the town of Paradise. Lahaina is the latest and deadliest in that period.

“Through a deadly combination of human and natural causes, we now see unprecedented wildfires in every corner of the globe and in communities that were previously not viewed as high risk,” Jim Pauley, the fire protection association’s CEO, said in an Aug. 12 blog post in reaction to the Lahaina fire.

The National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates federal wildfire response, reports that acreage burned in U.S. wildfires each year has trended upward since the 1980s, and that of the ten years with the largest acreage burned, all have been since 2004. That period “coincides with many of the warmest years on record nationwide,” a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analysis says.

Indeed, studies show that climate change has contributed to an increase in the number of large fires in the western states over the last 40 years by boosting temperatures, worsening drought conditions, and making strong winds and lightning storms more common.

The Maui fire and others like it “should be a really significant red flag,” LeRoy Westerling, a climate and wildfire scientist at the University of California, Merced, told The Washington Post. “Our perception of the underlying risk is no longer reflective of the reality we currently have. … That is a warning sign that something’s happened that we need to take into account.”

Here in Colorado, even as the risk of wildfire grows, more people live in harm’s way. As The Post’s Aldo Svaldi reports, a new study from CoreLogic says that 332,716 homes in the state now have at least a moderate risk of damage from wildfires, more than in any other state except California. That’s up from about 200,000 homes at risk a decade ago.

So, how can we make ourselves safer in Colorado? State lawmakers this year passed a series of measures aimed at boosting fire protections, including the first steps toward statewide building codes aimed at fire safety. And the advice we’ve been hearing for years about hardening our homes’ defenses with fire-resistant roofs and siding and clearing away flammable vegetation and debris is still good advice. But there’s more we can do:

Embrace controlled burns. Both the Marshall and Maui fires vividly demonstrate the threat communities face from grassland fires. Experts say that controlled burns — also referred to as prescribed fires — by expert crews are an important way to lessen that risk by keeping overgrown grasses in check. Yet an investigation by ProPublica and the Colorado News Collaborative after the Marshall Fire revealed that federal, state and local regulations — as well as public resistance — make it “nearly impossible” to conduct those burns in many areas.

Yes, prescribed burns do get out of control sometimes, such as the devastating New Mexico fire that torched 530 square miles last year or the Lower North Fork Fire that killed three people in Colorado in 2012. But that only happens about one time in a thousand, U.S. Forest Service data show. The alternative can be a far greater fire risk.

Boost firefighting funding. Both Hawaii and Colorado have underinvested in their firefighting forces. Two-thirds of Colorado’s fire departments lack the money to pay for necessary upgrades to personnel and equipment, says a new report from the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control. What’s more, the state will need 1,085 more career firefighters and 1,327 more volunteers over the next two years, the report says. And a not-so-fun fact: half of Colorado’s fire stations have no backup power in case the power goes out. We need to do better.

Sound the alarm. Emergency sirens remained silent during both the Marshall and Lahaina fires, largely because the alarm systems were intended for other purposes — for weather-related emergencies in Boulder County and tsunamis in Hawaii. In both disasters, many residents said they never received advance warning via phone calls or texts. In Lahaina, cell phone service failed as the flames spread and fiber optic cables melted. In the Marshall Fire, enhanced phone-warning technology was available but hadn’t been activated yet.

All this underscores the need for an all-of-the-above strategy in spreading the word about a wildfire emergency, including sirens, advanced phone alerts, and other warning systems. And communities should make sure residents know what alerts they can expect during a fire and what to do when they get one. Early this year, U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Lafayette) helped secure $1 million in funding for Boulder County to upgrade its siren system, saying it should be used during wildfires, too.

Take climate change seriously. Our world is getting hotter, drier and windier, boosting the threat of wildfire catastrophes. We need to take part in efforts to lessen the impacts of climate change, individually and around the world.

Mark Harden has been a Colorado journalist for three decades, serving as an editor and reporter at The Denver Post, the Denver Business Journal, Colorado Politics, Colorado Community Media and other publications.