Fire was a hot topic last week as the Estes Valley Fire Protection District presented a Learn with the League program at the American Legion Post 119 on Wednesday morning. The program was followed by an evening meeting on wildfire with presentations by Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway and Colorado State Forester Matt McCombs, as well as a screening of the documentary “Fire Lives Here.”
Warren Jones, interim fire chief for the Estes Valley Fire Protection District, Jon Landkamer, division chief of support services, and Logan Lasley, wildland risk reduction educator, spoke about the district’s current activities. These included a staffing reorganization and hiring plans for a new permanent chief, the wildfire risk in northern Colorado, collaboration with other fire districts, a mitigation grant received by Larimer County, and the district’s wildfire Home Ignition Zone assessments.
Larimer County Commissioner Jody Shadduck-McNally, along with Estes Park Mayor Gary Hall, hosted the Town Hall meeting on wildfire at the Estes Valley Community Center.
Conway spoke about the challenges homeowners face in getting their property covered, due not only to the risks of fire but also to hail along the Front Range and in eastern plains communities. Many people are surprised to learn that in Larimer County, 51 percent of homeowners’ insurance premiums are for hail, and just shy of 8 percent are for wildfire, said Conway.
“There’s a lot of attention that gets paid to wildfire, but hail causes us vast, vast problems, for example, here in Larimer County,” said Conway.
He called on Front Range communities to support legislation that would establish a hail grant program to help people fortify their roofs against hail, and a state-operated wildfire reinsurance program for insurance companies to hedge against catastrophic losses by paying out after disaster costs exceed a certain threshold. The measure failed in last year’s legislative session.
To tap into the state’s reinsurance pool, the bill would have required insurers to offer coverage in Colorado’s high-risk wildfire areas. The program would have been funded by a 0.5-percent fee on homeowners’ insurance policies, plus an additional 0.5-percent fee to support a hail-damage program. Homeowners whose properties met certain wildfire preparedness standards would have been exempt from the wildfire fee.
“I need your help to reach out to not just your senator,” said Conway. “I can’t urge you enough, folks, to reach out and reach out often. Emails and phone calls will start to move the needle.”
According to Conway, many legislators told him that “they simply hadn’t heard from their constituents that homeowners’ insurance is a problem.”
The forum also featured McCombs discussing the resurgence of mountain pine beetle infestations, a new threat of spruce beetles ravaging high-elevation spruce, and what that means for forest health and wildfire risk, including how to manage the woody biomass from dead trees.
“Let’s be the generation that continues the promise of gifting to the next generation an intact ecological environment and benefits that all of us typically take for granted, but when we really need it, it’s there,” said McCombs. “There isn’t a lot of opportunity to stop the march. The opportunity is to create the conditions to bring forth the future forest.”
Working with the U.S. Forest Service, the tree seedling nursery at the Colorado State University Foothills Campus is part of a state-led reforestation plan, McCombs explained.
“Where we lose species to fire and infestation, we’re coming back in and helping Mother Nature recover, ensuring we have that broad base of species and age classes, so that in the future, when these pressures come back into the system, the forests are more resilient and don’t need as much assistance,” said McCombs.
As the presentations ended, Shadduck-McNally invited members of the EVFPD and representatives from other partner organizations, including the Northern Colorado Fire Shed Collaborative, the Watershed Center, Larimer County Community Planning, Infrastructure, and Resources, the Estes Valley Watershed Coalition, the Peaks to People Water Fund, the Larimer Conservation District, and the Larimer County Office of Emergency Management to step forward and introduce themselves and share their takeaways from the evening.
The 25-minute film, “Fire Lives Here,” which explores fire as both a threat and a necessary force of renewal, is available online.
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