EVERGREEN, Colo. — With west-coast smoke in the air, local Red Flag alerts, plus hot and dry conditions across Colorado – it's hard to ignore fire risk this time of year.
One fire department said they’re seeing more social media chatter and fielding questions about something that has people worried: burn piles from cut-down trees, left sitting across parts of the foothills.
“We are hearing complaints,” said Einar Jensen, risk reduction coordinator for Evergreen Fire Rescue. “We’re hearing complaints because of the visual of – these are no longer standing trees, these are now piles of trees.”
Complaints include questions about why the piles haven’t been cleared, how long they’ve been sitting, and what kind of fire risk they pose if left in place. All fair questions, Jensen said.
“This process does take a long time. It reduces risk, but it does not eliminate risk. And we certainly understand the visual change can cause the anxiety itself.”
Jensen took 9NEWS cameras along Highway 103, on Open Space land owned by the City and County of Denver and within Evergreen Fire’s jurisdiction, to show us an example of some burn piles left after forest mitigation in the area and explain why this is a common strategy used by firefighters, and not an oversight.
Why are there so many burn piles?
“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of burn piles scattered throughout our jurisdiction, and probably tens of thousands of piles scattered across Colorado and all the western states. Because when we’re doing landscape-scale mitigation, it produces a lot of wood. It’s not just something you can throw at the end of your driveway and a waste management company comes and picks it up. Or something a single woodchipper can do in a single afternoon. This is a lot of wood.”
What is the strategy to get rid of the wood after forest mitigation?
“Instead of hauling out all that cut wood away to become someone else’s problem, or in a landfill, and increasing the carbon footprint with all that fuel and the chipping – whatever it is – we leave it in place. It takes a couple of years for these larger trees and the branches to dry out.
Then when we get to the next closest burn season – so over the winter when there’s at least 6 inches of snow on the ground – then agencies come back in and in a far more managed situation burn off the individual piles. Then the nutrients get back into soil, we choose days where smoke disperses into the atmosphere, rather than back into the road or neighborhoods. It is a long-term process, and over those 2-3 years, as humans, it’s harder for us to see longer term. We see thick forests and then we see thin forests with piles of wood and then eventually they’ll be gone and we'll put this in the rear-view mirror. But that’s hard for people who drive by here all the time. We get it.”
Isn't the sitting burn pile a fire risk, too?
“Individual piles can certainly burn, we know that. A well-placed lightning strike could ignite one of these piles. But a well-placed lightning strike, as we know, can also start a forest fire. And if that forest fire becomes a crown fire where the flames are up in the canopies of the trees, now we’ve got a big enough fire, especially if it's wind-driven, firefighters can't do anything about it. With a mitigated area like this, when fire in the dense forest gets to this mitigated area, fire drops down into the surface fuels – and the intensity drops, and now firefighters can deal with it, to protect those other piles of fuel in our community – the homes, business, schools and the infrastructure.”
Jensen said he welcomes the questions – even the complaints – because he’d rather people be engaged with fire risk than ignore it.
“We completely appreciate the concern of our public, our visitors, about these piles of fuel. And about the health and resilience of our forest and community overall – that’s why were open to questions and discussion,” he said. “We love this dialogue. Because the more we all see something and say something, the more we can be safer. We can protect this amazing community we live in.”