Human-caused blazes continuing to cause issues

As firefighters fought the third-largest wildfire in Colorado’s history this summer, a Costilla County sheriff’s deputy drove to the home of a man reported to be burning brush in his backyard.

“He said it sprinkled the day before, so he thought it was OK,” Costilla County Sheriff Amos Medina said. “He had a tractor, so he thought he would be able to lower the blade and put it out.”

Medina recalled his deputies issuing three citations for violating the fire ban after the Spring Creek fire burned more than 100,000 acres, forcing hundreds to evacuate and eventually consuming 139 homes in Costilla County.

It’s a growing problem throughout the West. The number of human-caused wildfires continues to climb even as state and federal lawmakers rush to raise the penalties for disobeying fire bans, igniting fireworks and forgetting or neglecting to properly extinguish campfires.

Colorado lawmakers increased the punishment for failing to fully extinguish a campfire from a $50 fine to a penalty of up to $750 and six months in jail during the 2018 legislative session.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Millie Hamner, D-Dillon, hailed its passage as “an essential tool in the fight against devastating wildfires.”

A few months later — two days before the bill went into effect — three young men allegedly lit a campfire that started the High Chateau fire, burning more than 1,400 acres and destroying eight homes. According to the arrest affidavit, the father of one of the young men called his son to remind him not to light a campfire because Teller County was under

a fire ban.

Humans were responsible for nine out of every 10 forest fires in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota in 2017, according to the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center.

And the annual number of wildfires in those states and the rest of the West continue to grow.

Part of it can be explained by the ever-increasing number of people who visit or build homes in the wilderness.

The White River National Forest is the most-visited federal forest in the country, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual forest services reports consistently rank Arapaho and Roosevelt among the top five.

Those two forests see more than 15 million visitors each year.

“One of the top, top, top concerns I hear from county commissioners is law enforcement,” Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, said. “They need more law enforcement in those forests because of the heavy visitation.”

Gardner — along with Sen. Michael Bennet, DColorado, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon — have a plan to fix it. It’s called the Ski Area Fee Retention Act. The trio introduced it in March.

Ski areas located on national forests pay a fee to the federal government. The U.S. Treasury takes the money, and some of it trickles back to the forests. Gardner’s bill would give the forest service a bigger cut.

“That money ought to come back and stay within that forest,” Gardner said.

Enforcement is a chal- lenge at the state and local level.

The Colorado Parks and Wildlife wrote 34 citations for failing to extinguish a campfire and 12 for violating a fire ban in 2017, according to data provided to The Denver Post.

That’s a combined 0.0004 percent of the more than 12 million annual visitors to Colorado’s 44 state parks.

“Who knows how many fires people light that we never get called about,” Medina said.

Another problem plaguing wildfire prevention efforts is what happens on private land. Both the Spring Creek and High Chateau fires started on private property.

Approximately 186,000 private landowners control 30 percent of the state’s forests, according to the Colorado State Forest Service.

“Deterrents are only going to go so far,” Gardner said. “We also have to work on the social responsibility part of this.”

One idea he floated is making it easier for people in rural communities to dispose of their trash and yard debris during a fire ban.

Medina and Gardner pointed out that rural communities often don’t have or can’t afford regular trash pickup, and sometimes the drive to the local landfill is more than an hour.

“That’s something that I think local land managers can help with,” Gardner said. “The forest service could be working with local counties to make that decision and develop regional hubs or gathering facilities for trash during a fire ban.”

Rep. Hamner likes that idea, but she added that part of this problem stems from a lack of affordable housing around resort communities.

“The high cost of housing is pushing people into looking at other options,” Hamner said. “There’s a growing impact from people camping illegally on our public lands.”

The man accused of starting the Spring Creek fire wasn’t camping on public lands, but he was living in an RV on private property without access to utility hookups, according to the arrest affidavit. Jesper Joergensen reportedly told police he used a fire pit outside his camper to cook.

“I think one of the factors that we’re facing is scientists call this a new normal,” Hamner said. “We’re going to have to transition into an acceptance of wildfires.”

Families who have burned brush for generations may have to stop and folks who insist on living surrounded by trees might be taking a serious risk.

Almost 1,400 homes near Silverthorne were spared this summer because of a fuel break created by cutting trees, brush and other fuels along a swath of land between the properties and the wild lands.

Now, Summit County is working on a ballot question asking residents to pay a little extra so it can clear more fuel breaks throughout the county.

Hamner’s term limited, so she won’t be returning to the Colorado Legislature in 2019. But if she were coming back, she said she’d propose matching that money to help counties that commit to creating fuel breaks.

“We’re in a different world now,” Hamner said. “We are all going to have work better and smarter.”