Estes Valley Fire Protection District Chief Kevin Nunn used the August Coffee and Tea at the PD to introduce himself to the community — and to deliver a message he has carried from Tennessee to Utah and now Colorado: Communities threatened by wildfire can reduce their risk long before smoke appears on the horizon.
Nunn, who took over as the district’s fire chief July 20, focused much of his presentation at Estes Park Town Hall on the Estes Valley Community Wildfire Protection Plan and the role residents can play in making the valley a more fire-adapted community.
The district’s current Community Wildfire Protection Plan, commonly called a CWPP, was completed in 2022 and identifies wildfire hazards, evacuation concerns, home ignition risks, firefighting challenges and priority areas for mitigation work throughout the district.
The plan is approaching its recommended five-year update, and Nunn said the district will spend the coming year reviewing it with residents, community organizations, and partner agencies.
The goal, he said, is to create a community of informed and prepared residents who work together to reduce wildfire risk. The CWPP guides everything from mitigation projects and grant applications to public education and home assessments.
Lessons from Gatlinburg
For Nunn, wildfire planning is more than a document on a shelf.
Before coming to Estes Park, he spent about 20 years as a firefighter in Sevier County, Tennessee, including the Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge area. There, he trained structural firefighters in wildland firefighting tactics and helped develop a countywide wildfire protection plan.
That work took on new significance during the devastating 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires that swept into Gatlinburg and surrounding communities.
The disaster burned roughly 17,900 acres, damaged or destroyed more than 2,400 structures and killed 14 people. Nearly 200 people were injured and more than 14,000 were evacuated.
Nunn told Thursday’s audience that firefighters in the area had spent years preparing for a major wildland fire before the disaster struck. No firefighters were killed or injured during the event, something he said was credited in part to the training they had received.
The experience also demonstrated that communities do not have to look dry to face serious wildfire danger.
The lush green hardwood forests surrounding Gatlinburg appeared dramatically different from the arid landscape Nunn later encountered as chief of Utah’s North Tooele Fire District. But both presented significant wildfire risks.
“People’s behavior didn’t change,” Nunn said. “The fuels were more volatile.”
His experience in both places reinforced his reliance on community wildfire protection plans to determine where mitigation work should occur, how communities should prepare and where resources should be directed.
Preparing homes before the fire
Instead, homeowners can make small changes that substantially improve a structure’s ability to survive wildfire.
The district offers home assessments that identify potential vulnerabilities and recommend improvements such as cleaning roofs and gutters, sealing openings, installing mesh over vents, removing combustible debris and managing vegetation around structures.
The home ignition zone begins immediately around a structure. Nunn said the first five feet around homes, sheds, and other structures should contain noncombustible materials such as rock or bare soil.
From five to 30 feet, property owners should manage vegetation, remove ladder fuels, and limb trees so a ground fire cannot easily move into their crowns. From 30 to 100 feet, the emphasis shifts to removing dead trees, branches, pine needles, and other accumulated fuels.
“It’s not a clear cutting of your property,” Nunn said. “It’s a very, very managed landscape.”
The objective is to create homes that can withstand a wildfire even when firefighters cannot immediately defend every structure.
“The idea is that firefighters don’t have to be at your home when there’s a wildfire,” Nunn said. “You don’t have to be home. The fire will go out and around your property and move on.”
The district is also working on larger landscape-level mitigation projects with government agencies and other partners.
Nunn pointed to the Thunder Mountain area as one example. The district recently signed a contract for thinning, mastication, and biomass removal there. He said the work will be entirely grant-funded.
Smokey Bear may be coming to Estes
During his tenure with the North Tooele Fire District, Nunn obtained a large Smokey Bear statue for the community through grant funding and installed it outside the fire station.
Now he wants one here.
“I’m intending to get another one of those to put here in Estes,” Nunn said.
The statue costs about $10,000, he said, with an accompanying fire-danger sign adding approximately $3,000. Nunn said he plans to work with the town to determine whether a statue could be placed downtown or at another prominent location.
The idea may sound whimsical, but Nunn sees Smokey Bear as a serious public education tool.
He said research and his own experience have convinced him that frightening residents with images of burning homes is not an effective way to persuade people to reduce wildfire risks.
“If I showed you picture after picture after picture of houses burning down, that’s not effective,” Nunn said.
Fear, he said, can cause people to assume a disaster will not happen to them rather than motivating them to prepare.
“My job is to get you away from that fear and move you into action,” he said.
Smokey Bear offers another approach.
The character is instantly recognizable, gives residents and visitors a reason to interact with firefighters and can open the door to conversations about wildfire prevention and home mitigation.
Nunn envisions people taking photographs with Smokey Bear and visiting the fire station for wildfire-prevention information.
Public education, home assessments and personal relationships between firefighters and residents are all pieces of the same strategy, he said.
A shared responsibility
During his presentation, Nunn repeatedly returned to the idea that wildfire preparation cannot rest solely with the fire district.
Individual homeowners are responsible for reducing risks around their homes. Neighborhoods and homeowners associations can coordinate larger mitigation projects. The fire district, town and other government agencies can tackle landscape-level projects and pursue grants.
The district also plans to continue developing partnerships with Rocky Mountain National Park, Larimer County, neighboring fire departments, and other agencies.
Those relationships are critical when a fire starts. Nunn pointed to a lightning strike on Giant Track about two weeks ago as an example. Rocky Mountain National Park automatically sent personnel as area agencies worked to attack the fire quickly and keep it small.
One community member asked about resources to help homeowners to do fire mitigation. Nunn said there is some grant funding that can assist homeowners and neighborhoods to offset the cost of mitigation.
For Nunn, those individual projects, partnerships, and personal conversations ultimately come back to the same document he began Thursday’s presentation discussing — the CWPP. The next step is getting the community involved in updating — and implementing — it.
“Everybody has a role to play in mitigating wildfire risk,” Nunn said.
You must be logged in to post a comment.