Thread by @shayshinecastle

Tuesday = city council night, and I'm about as enthused for this meeting as I was to get out of bed this morning.

We're talking fire resilience and parks & rec plans.

All virtual for tonight's study session; that will continue in the future. But council is back in chambers for business meetings, and the public is welcome back May 17.

That's the plan, anyway; we'll see if it changes.

On to fire resilience: I have no notes for you, as this was added kind of last minute.

Staff presentation here: documents.bouldercolorado.gov/WebLink/DocVie…

"The work doesn't just sit with one department," city manager NRV says.

For example: Open space does a ton of mitigation on its many, many acres.

We'll talk more about that later.

"I don't think there's a dept in the city that isn't called to action when a wildfire disaster occurs in our area," says Chief Mike Calderazzo.

The recent NCAR Fire is a perfect illustration of what we're talking about tonight, Calderazzo says: Collaboration, preparation and good outcomes.

"A lot of things came together pretty well that day."

We can do all the right things, Calderazzo says, and fire can still get the best of us sometimes.

NCAR Fire: 190 acres, no structures lost, no injuries
That's best case, Calderazzo says.

Calderazzo: And of course, "the weather cooperated."

Calderazzo: Our wildland team trains firefighters county-wide, not just our firefighters.

In order to keep everyone trained, it cost $581,359 in 2020 (reimbursed by the feds or other gov't orgs) and $438,479 in 2021.

Dan Burke from OSMP is up now to talk about land management that dept does to prevent fires.

Bc Boulder is surrounded by open space, Burke says, how we treat it matters a lot to fire protection.

Some numbers (which we love to see)
~46,000 acres of open space are protected
- 65% grassland ecosystems
- 25% forested ecosystems

5.6M visits to open space each year
110 trailheads or access point (another 145 informal access points)
155 miles of designated trail and 150 miles of social trails

Another 15,000 acres are actively used in agriculture; over 13,000 have "some sort of cattle grazing," Burke says.

Grazing is actually a fire mitigation tool.
Some others: Forest thinning, noxious/invasive weed suppression

Over past 10 years: More than 2,000 acres of forest thinning, including 500-600 acres in the NCAR burn area.

Lots of acres in that burn area were grazed as well.

"The cattle are on their way right now this week to help suppress invasive tall oatgrass," Burke says.

This photo is a great illustration.
On the left: Ungrazed (note all the tall, invasive oatgrass — great fire fuel)
On the right: Graze area

Both these strategies kept the NCAR fire from getting out of control, Burke says. Grazing knocked down the fuel, and forest thinning kept the flames from jumping to the top of the canopy.

We had v little tree mortality, Burke says.

Ungrazed areas burned much hotter than grazed ones in the NCAR fire, Burke says.

Back to Calderazzo to talk non-open space mitigation.
"Every individual homeowner can help today as well."

You can get your property assessed for wildfire risk! And learn what things you can do to make it more resilient.

bouldercolorado.gov/services/wildf…

60% of homes in the Wildland Urban Interface are assessed. But, as Calderazzo told me, the Marshall Fire (and climate change) has experts thinking about what should be included in the WUI... maybe a lot more than used to be.

Calderazzo: "In a perfect world, we'd be able to notify folks in a way that didn't clog the streets, tell them where to go and get them out in an orderly fashion. And not over-notify."

But again, post-Marshall Fire, officials have perhaps have over-notified out of an abundance of caution. (Again per Calderazzo)

Brad Riggin of Boulder police and fire comms: We used a new technology for the NCAR Fire, where every phone in a particular area is pinged. This sometimes results in over-notifying folks who don't need to evacuate.

"That's just a limitation of the system," Riggin says. "Anytime we send this type of alert, it's going to bleed over" into areas that don't need to be notified.

Now we're onto council qs.
Friend: Can we or should we add quarterly updates to our council workplan?
NRV: We consider this part of our workplan. Does council want to lift this up as one of its priorities?

It kind of is already... both Friend and Winer had disaster resilience on their priority lists. It didn't make the top cut bc it's already being worked on. boulderbeat.news/city-council/b…

Friend: After some big floods, we hired consultants to help ID what to do on big waterways. Are we doing any of that for fire? Evacuation routes, for example.

Calderazzo: We have plans that need to be updated. We can do that in-house, maybe, or we might need outside help. We're figuring that out now.

Boulder loves a plan. Here are the relevant ones to this:
- Emergency operations plan
- Community wildfire protection plan
- Structure protection plan
- Forest ecosystem management plan

Brockett: Why wasn't the siren system used? When do we use that?
Calderazzo: We've used it in the past, and it has limited effectiveness. It's not worked as well as we wanted.

In some cases it drove ppl *toward danger*
Like during the flood, ppl heard it and thought, I'll go check out the creek.

Calderazzo: It's outdated. Plus, it's expensive to update. There are newer technologies that work better.

But, he says, there is room to improve on notifying folks who aren't online or near their phones, in some public way.

Wallach: How many acres are eligible for thinning? How much have we done? How long will it take?

Burke: 80% of what was called for in the plan has been thinned. We're focusing now on the Shanahan Ridge area.

Wallach: Under current conditions, fireworks have gone from being a nuisance to something different. Fireworks are going on all the time. Is there anything to be done about that?

"Everybody can live through a little noise. But it's becoming a dangerous activity."

I don't believe any fires have been started by fireworks... at least not this year. But I'm sure it has happened. And yes, fireworks = dangerous. (Fire is literally in the name)

Calderazzo: They're obviously illegal, but idk if that's enough of a deterrent.

Carey Weinheimer: It's illegal to possess them period in Boulder. And we do respond when they are set off. But it's really hard to catch ppl.

Weinheimer from the police dept, btw

Folkerts: Have we evaluated and ID'd modifications to evacuation plans, post-Marshall Fire?

Weinheimer: Anytime we're trying to move an entire portion of the city out of choke points, it's going to take some time. It's obviously something we're looking to improve.

Mike Chard from Boulder Office of Emergency Management: We can do better letting ppl know what routes are available to them.

Door-to-door searches are still incredibly effective. And controlling traffic at those choke points.

"Orderly evacuations and mass notifications kinda work against one another," Chard says. We're exploring ways to make notifications "more surgical" and precise.

"We'll eventually get those narrowed down a bit."

Calderazzo: We can step up public education. References public awareness campaigns in California specifically for residents to know how/where to evacuate.

"We are nowhere near there."

Folkerts: Are we thinking of updating the WUI? (Wildland Urban Interface)
Calderazzo: We have to every 3 years regardless. So yes, we are.

Properties in the WUI may have different regulations, like building codes and fire mitigation requirements.

I'm not 100% on that, but I'll follow up.

Benjamin: Open space's charter dictates very stringently what open space can be used for. Are we making sure that we are allowed to use it to protect our community?

I think that q was specific to fire barriers or structures for mitigation or response.

Burke: The charter purposes allows for the management of lands. We place prairie dog barriers on our lands. And there are structures.

It's about tradeoff, he says. We could get rid of all shrubs in the WUI. But shrubs are important for our songbirds.

So the better question is about tradeoffs, Burke says, not what's allowed by the open space charter.

Friend: Are there current volunteer opportunities and where can we direct folks if so?

Calderazzo: We're working on that. "Admittedly, we haven't been very good about that yet."

Winer: I'd love to see some sort of pilot program in South Boulder, where ppl are block captains. Can we have some sort of neighborhood organization?

Benjamin: I'm interested in looking at the WUI building codes and regular building codes, how they are similar and how they are different. At some point, that will just be citywide.

I'd also like to think about mandatory brush/vegetation clearance.

And home sale requirements, Benjamin says. They do this in Calif: proof of mandatory flood or fire insurance upon sale.

And building in renter protections. They might not have the same luxury of knowledge about knowing they're in a fire zone.

Council making suggestions now, for policy things the city can explore to boost fire resilience.

Benjamin: A lot of this may cost big $$. "Don't think of money as a barrier. A lot of money is coming available" from state and federal levels bc ppl are starting to think more about fire.

Folkerts: With building codes, i'm interested in things that will be retroactive. We have a lot of older MF homes that we've seen pose a substantial risk to ppl in our community.

Didn't talk about this much earlier, but Boulder has done this before when they stopped allowing shake shingle roofs. Every home had to replace theirs, but they had a long time to do it.

See also: The outdoor lighting ordinance. Although that one wasn't fire-related

Most of the time when Boulder requires something costly and difficult, they don't make it retroactive: Building codes apply to *new* builds or remodels.

Council unanimously agrees to get quarter updates on fire mitigation/response/resiliency, etc.

And that wraps this one.

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