For years, firefighters across Boulder County have relied on a single weather station in the Sugarloaf community to assess daily fire risk and help inform the response of fire districts to calls about smoke or flames.
But one station poorly represents a county spanning nearly 500 square miles of varying altitudes and topography. There could be snow on the ground in Sugarloaf while eastern Boulder County is dry and vulnerable to fire.
Now, with wildfire season looming, Boulder County is debuting a more data-driven, coordinated approach to avert disaster.
Three Remote, Automated Weather Stations — known as RAWS — have started collecting information like wind speeds, humidity and moisture levels at several points across the county. One RAWS is located on Heil Ranch open space, another is off the east side of 287 between Highway 52 and Lookout Road. The third is on Shanahan Ridge open space.
Each day, data from these RAWS is compiled to help determine whether county fire risk is low, medium or high. Other factors determining fire risk include things like drought level from the U.S. Drought Monitor. (The data is publicly viewable here if you select the RAWS network.)
“It gives a better, real-time snapshot of what the conditions are,” Brian Oliver, the City of Boulder’s wildland fire chief, said of the new RAWS. He added that with more units, there is now data from areas more representative of “where we’re going to need to fight fire.”
The City of Boulder paid for one station. The county bought the other two.
“The big things with these stations is they are really accurate,” said Seth McKinney, fire management officer for the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office.
The RAWS data is essential as the county shifts to an “indices-based response,” which all 20-plus fire districts in Boulder County aim to adopt before fire season begins in May or June. Local fire officials in Boulder County tailored this response system, which is used in other parts of the country, to fit the county’s unique topography and climate.
Under the indices-based response agreement, if flames catch in any of the county’s roughly 20 fire districts, that fire will receive the same resources as any other under similar weather conditions. Resources will be allocated depending on the day’s fire risk: low, medium or high.
Currently, each fire district responds to wildfire at its own discretion. This can be tenuous, especially in districts that rely almost entirely on volunteers. A delay in mobilizing volunteers, and then having only one engine available, can result in flames growing to unmanageable levels.
Under the new agreement, by contrast, if a call comes in on a low-risk fire day, two fire engines — a wildland engine and a Type 1 engine commonly seen in town — will respond no matter the fire’s location, according to Oliver. On high-risk days, the response will involve eight engines — two Type 1 and six wildland — along with two water tenders designed for carrying substantial amounts of water.
“If it’s hot, dry and windy, we’re sending a whole bunch of stuff,” said Oliver. “We’re going to stack the boxes as thick as we can to stop that ignition from spreading.”
Both McKinney and Oliver agreed that the Marshall Fire showed that fire districts operating in silos doesn’t work. Flames in one district can quickly threaten another.
“We’ve always had pretty good mutual aid agreements between the fire districts, but if anything the Marshall Fire has really solidified the need for those agreements,” McKinney said. “The fact that we have a bunch of 20-some-odd, type A personality fire chiefs who have gotten together and agreed on something is monumental.”
‘Firefighting is a team sport’
This data-driven, coordinated response could present a logistical conundrum in the future. Many of the county’s fire districts, especially those in the mountains, are volunteer based. In the long term, there’s some concern that mountain fire districts will not have enough volunteers to staff their stations and fully staffed operations will be spread thin.
“Those of us with dedicated wildland staffing or dedicated 24-hour staffing will in the short term fill those box alarms more often than not,” Oliver, with the city, said.
Oliver added that this approach is fine for now, since fires that start in one fire district are often a threat to others. “We might as well be there on the front end, because if it gets bigger we’re going to be there on the back end,” he said.
For example, the Sunshine Wildland Fire in December 2022 was not on City of Boulder land, but the city fire department had considerable interest in helping put it out, as Boulder was downwind.
“I really worry about the long-term abilities of some of the members in our mountain fire districts,” McKinney said. “The people who are able to afford a house in the mountains in Boulder County are not going to be the type of people who go and volunteer in their local fire district.”
Volunteer fire departments are dwindling nationwide. In the United States, 65% of firefighters are volunteers, according to the National Volunteer Fire Council. As of 2020, there was a 34-year low of volunteers.
“Major factors contributing to recruitment challenges include increased time demands, more rigorous training requirements, and the proliferation of two-income families whose members do not have time to volunteer,” the council’s fact sheet says. “Volunteers cannot afford to live in the community they serve,” it added.
Chris O’Brien, the fire chief of the Lefthand Fire Protection District, doesn’t see this happening in his district and said that volunteer districts in Boulder County sometimes have more resources to combat fires than career districts. He pointed out that it’s common for volunteers to assist career districts, just as career districts often assist volunteer districts.
“While it may take us a little longer to turn out a volunteer response, I have 55 volunteers,” O’Brien said. “I have 18 pieces of apparatus.”
O’Brien gave the example of the Middlefork Fire, which burned on the same day as the Marshall Fire. O’Brien said the fire had “drastically more wind conditions” than Marshall.
“With the response plan of the volunteer agencies, the fire was held to 23 acres with no structures lost,” he said, adding that the initial response was five trucks from volunteer districts and one from career districts. “The potential for loss on the Middlefork Fire was it going through Longmont and past I-25.”
McKinney said “there is a wide range of capabilities in our volunteer fire districts across the county.” And that “we’re all definitely better off working together,” citing the indices-based response agreement.
O’Brien, on that point, agreed. “As a whole, the fire chiefs in Boulder County, both paid and volunteer, are working together,” he said. “We recognize that firefighting is a team sport.”
Clarification: The original version of this article suggested that Boulder County’s volunteer districts depended on fully staffed districts, such as the City of Boulder’s wildland fire department. The 20-plus fire districts vary in size, needs and capacities. Some have ample volunteers while others may not. The updated story incorporates Chris O’Brien’s perspective, the fire chief of the Lefthand Fire Protection District, who mentioned having sufficient volunteers in his district. Any statements suggesting that career districts were compensating for volunteer districts have been removed.