The Pikes Peak Region is no stranger to wildfires.

Residents remember well the Black Forest fire, which burned more than 14,200 acres and around 500 homes the summer of 2013. It was the most structurally damaging wildfire in state history prior to the Marshall fire, which burned in late 2021 and into the first days of 2022. Most recently the Marshall fire, which burned more than 1,000 homes in Boulder County, has gotten people in the Tri-Lakes area talking about what they can do to prevent such a conflagration. It’s something Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Protection District Fire Chief Andy Kovacs, who spent nearly 30 years fighting fires in Orange County, Calif., thinks about. 

“My greatest concern for our community is a wildfire,” Kovacs said. “Both the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires were obviously very near and dear to our hearts and our community, and so we want to be prepared if an incident like that were to occur.”

The Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Protection District covers the greater Tri-Lakes region, with boundaries drawn at Rampart Range and Palmer Lake in the west, Black Forest Road in the east, the Air Force Academy and Baptist and Hodgen roads in the south, and County Line Road in the north. 

One way Kovacs and the district are preparing for a wildfire is through pre-fire plans that will be used to guide incident commanders during the first six hours of a fire.

Kovacs said the district has identified 12 communities in the area in need of a pre-fire plan, or a specific scenario-based plan describing how emergency response is used in specific fire-based situations. This year, the district is focusing on plans for the Woodmoor, Forest Lakes and Red Rock Ranch communities due to their populations and locations, Kovacs said. The Forest Lakes and Red Rock Ranch communities are near the Pike National Forest. 

The plans cost about $10,000 each and involve sending data to fire consultants who have years of expertise dealing with wildland fires. Kovacs said the majority of consultants the district works with are based in California and have either been part of municipal departments or part of Cal Fire, the state’s department of forestry and fire. 

The money for the consultations was granted by the Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Protection District’s Board of Directors and comes out of the district’s annual budget.

The consultants will assume a worst-case scenario and plot a course for incident commanders including details on what communities, people and homes are in danger; where people need to be evacuated to; where the incident command post should be located; what type of resources will be needed and how many of those resources will be required; and how they can concentrate firefighting efforts to control an active blaze. 

According to Kovacs, incident commanders at the beginning of a wildfire like the Marshall fire are already behind the curve. These plans will help those commanders make decisions and allocate resources quickly, enabling them to “catch up” to the blaze, so to speak. 

Consultants will take data about each community from the fire district and use it to create the pre-fire plans. In May, Kovacs said, the consultants will visit Colorado to confirm and get visual proof of the data they’ve been given. After that, the plan will be released and firefighters trained accordingly. Kovacs expects the plans to be done by mid-summer. 

Preparation doesn’t just end with pre-fire plans, however. The district partners with various homeowners associations to do fire mitigation in each community across the district. For instance, the district received a matched fund grant that enabled it to purchase a wood chipper and vehicle to transport it. 

“It’s a partnership,” Kovacs said. “We don’t just go out and do all the heavy lifting. The homeowners are each responsible for clearing the brush on their property and they essentially bring it to the curb or to the street, and then our firefighters will go out with the woodchipper and basically mulch all that fuel to, essentially, get rid of it.”

Kovacs said even the highest offices in the state are paying more attention to fire prevention efforts. While there has been work done over several years to improve wildland firefighting efforts statewide, the Marshall fire opened a lot of eyes, he said. As a result, he expects there will be a considerable amount of funding to help aid with the purchase of additional firefighting equipment.

Even with all the additional funding, mitigation and training, a fire like the one residents of Louisville and Superior saw in December presents a steep challenge for firefighters. 

Kovacs read some of the data behind the Marshall fire and was surprised by how fast the blaze moved, becoming less of a wildfire and more of a structure-to-structure conflagration. Normally, a wildfire moves quickly thanks to a mixture of fuels, wind and topography. According to Kovacs, the area in Boulder County wasn’t especially fuel-rich and didn’t see any significant changes in elevation. It was purely powered by winds in the area that blew in excess of 100 miles per hour.

During a fire mitigation town hall last month, Kovacs issued a somber statement.

“We don’t have enough firefighters in Colorado to put out a fire that’s wind-driven like that,” he said.

But Kovacs said it doesn’t mean the efforts the district is making aren’t helpful. In fact, it’s quite the opposite — the strategies developed will minimize fire damage and allow residents to escape the fire, which is crucial, he said.

From there, Kovacs said the plan in a Marshall fire scenario would be to work the periphery and boundaries of the fire to keep it from propagating from one side to another. Firefighters would also work to keep the fire path narrow, and then once the weather becomes favorable, crews can dispatch firefighting forces around the head of the fire and prevent it from spreading. 

Furthermore, Kovacs said the state is moving forward to create a more robust mutual aid system, which will enable firefighters to get resources and reinforcements to incident commanders faster.