The wildland fire season is becoming a 'year around an event,' explained Karola Hanks, fire marshal for Durango Fire Protection District. Hanks offers educational advice on protecting your home, fire mitigation, and what
stage 1 fire restrictions are.

Transcript

Sarah Flower:

Hi, I'm Sarah Flower with KSUT Tribal Radio. We are joined here today for an informational, educational interview with Karola Hanks, the fire marshal for Durango Fire and Rescue Authority, talking about how to protect your home with fire season upon us already this season. We've had the Ute Pass fire and the fire just north of Pagosa Springs. So today, I want to start off with here we are mid-May. Is it early, in your opinion, to really start having these conversations?

Karola Hanks:

No. And maybe it might be a few weeks late, we really did do need to be having these conversations and it's not too late to have them. But it's the conversation we should be having throughout the year because the wildland fire season is no longer a short small time during the year. We're seeing fires in various parts of the state and across the nation that are happening in what we've never called the wildland season. Right. So it's a year round event now so we should be having these conversations regularly.

Sarah Flower:

I think recently with this, Ute Pass fire just off of Florida there. A lot of people were on pre-evac it was a densely populated area near where that fire started. Luckily, nothing catastrophic. Crews were on it immediately. And the work of those the fire crew out there was - really second to none. But I think Karola people thinking now, well, what do I do? Here? I got this pre-evac notice. Let's talk about wildfire preparedness.

Karola Hanks:

Right. So I think one of the things that I'd really like to pursue is that just because we had a fire in the Youthpass area that a lot of people are looking at say, well, they're out there doing mitigation, and they're trying to do the right thing, and they had this fire. I don't want people to let me

Sarah Flower:

pause you there, because that is the cause of the Ute Pass Fire was somebody trying to do the right thing, under no restrictions as of yet. We'll get to that in a moment. No fire restrictions. And and here, was somebody out there trying to do the right thing in fire preparedness.

Karola Hanks:

Absolutely correct. This was trying to do the right thing, trying to do the mitigation and something that they had done in years past, right, not changing what they have done. The difference was the conditions of the day. But you're correct. There were no fire restrictions. And stage one fire restrictions would not have prevented this activity. I mean, we still want people doing fire mitigation. This is one of these one offs that we hope we don't see again, but it happened. The thing about it is don't panic, keep doing the wildfire mitigation. Let's do the right things.

Sarah Flower:

And let's talk wildfire mitigation so that somebody might that might be listening today looking around at their yard thinking well, what can I do?

Karola Hanks:

Well, in wildfire mitigation, that defensible space, we break it down into three zones, zone one, two and three. Zone one is that zero to five feet from your home. That's where we want to see what we call hardscaping. Okay, we don't want to see mulch, things that are combustible, that will take the fire into your home. Those are the areas where embers will sit and start and begin the fire on that building. It's where you see leaves and needles collect when the wind blows around your house, right? Well, if that's where the needles in the end, the leaves are going, that's where the embers are going to go. So that zero to five feet that first is part of the zone. That's where you want to be some hardscaping so lava rock gravel, flagstone got a little more money, some concrete or asphalt or that type of thing to protect that home zone twos that next phase from five to 30 feet out where you want to start limbing up the trees, you don't want crowns to touch each other. So to trees in their crowns, you don't want him touching and get that 10s feet of space between them. You don't want any two trees with branches hanging over your house. That'll get us in trouble and drop those embers and whatever burns from there down. We limb up because we call those ladder fuels. So if a fire comes in a grass level, and then starts to climb the tree, we don't want it to be able to do that. So we want to trim those ladder fuels. Get those up around 10 feet 12 feet, so that we're not getting that fire up into the trees. We can fight fire on the ground fire in the tops of trees is a whole another ballgame. And that's when you see the aircraft and the helicopters and everything else coming in. Because we need their assistance. Zone three. Zone three is where you still want to do some limbing up and you can do some clumping of trees some clumping of oak brush but you want to keep those clumped you want to make this a healthy forest right healthy forest isn't so thick that it has to compete for all this water and then nothing grows effectively.

Sarah Flower:

Karola as of this broadcast, La Plata County has issued stage one fire restrictions in La Plata county towns of Bayfield Ignacio, the city of Durango, or any federal or tribal lands effective as of this broadcast, so there's no open burning using explosive materials like fireworks. So stage one fire restrictions are in place right now. I want to talk about what stage one means. And has it been implemented this early before? To your recollection?

Karola Hanks:

That's a really good question. I feel like it gets earlier every year. But I also feel like we're always there by Memorial weekend. I mean, it just seems like it Memorial weekend when everybody wants to have a campfire and roast hot dogs and, and do all those fun outdoor things. We're in that position this year, I think we were anticipating it happening. And so we're a little bit ahead, maybe stage one fire restrictions. We do them in coordination with the federal agencies, because we want to keep it so that it is not confusing to the general public where on the fort on forest service land, you have one set of rules and on private, you know, city land or private land or county land, you got a whole different set of rules, you want to get some consistency in that process, because we're all in the same position. And most of what I hear from people is can I have a campfire? And most of the time what they're hearing is no, you're still gonna get to use your barbecue grill, your propane fired barbecue grill. I haven't read the Forest Service rules coming out yet this year, but I anticipate that they're only going to be wanting those in camp designated campgrounds.

Sarah Flower:

stage one is not the most restrictive?

Karola Hanks:

Sarah Flower:

Karola Hanks, fire marshal for Durango Fire and Rescue authority. Thanks so much for joining us here today on KSUT Tribal Radio

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