ARVADA, Colo. — The Arvada Fire Protection District, Jefferson County Open Space and Team Rubicon joined forces for wildfire mitigation Saturday.
This mitigation plan had been in the making for months. They said after seeing the devastation the Marshall Fire caused, they realized just how important wildfire mitigation is in cities.
“After what we saw take place a few years ago with the Marshall Fire, it became evident that we needed to start focusing a little bit more on doing some urban mitigation to help reduce the risk of that happening again in another area here in the Denver metro,” said Annie Oakes, the communications lead for Team Rubicon in Colorado.
“It's like therapy while they're out here serving the community,” Oakes said. “Team Rubicon is a disaster response organization or a humanitarian response organization. We largely do mitigation operations here in Colorado like you’re seeing here, but we also do responses to floods, we do mitigation operations across the country. We just try to show up wherever we can be needed, wherever disaster strikes.”
This time, they tried to make a difference before disaster strikes.
They woke up bright and early to clear dead trees and brush out of Van Bibber Open Space in Arvada. “As you see behind me, we have many different homes and across the street we have many apartments complexes,” Oakes said. "So there's a lot of people's livelihoods at stake here.”
“It's not only dangerous for the homeowners, and the structures' ability to survive that fire, it's dangerous for our firefighters too, because they don't have an area to work in,” said Brady Johnson, the spokesperson for Arvada Fire Protection District. “So now they have some cleared space.”
Johnson said Arvada Fire Protection District and Jefferson County Open Space have had an eye on this project for about nine months now.
“All these homes here, their odds of surviving a wildfire are much better now,” Johnson said.
They hope their heavy lifting now will lead to a lighter load in the future.
“If our work positively affects one person, it's worth it,” Oakes said. “The comradery is unmatched. There is nothing like starting the day with a mess and walking away knowing we did unimaginable good in our community.”
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