On Saturday, Jodi Mallozzi — Fire Prevention and Education, Pagosa Ranger District — sent out an email she titled the “Final” Little Devil Fire update. It read, in part:
Today’s mop up operations were in full swing bringing the containment to 70%. The Little Devil Fire will transition this evening to a Type 4 Incident Commander with full containment expected August 23 and the fire is expected to be fully controlled on August 30.
Firefighters and equipment are being demobilized and reassigned to fires. The helicopter will remain near the Little Devil Fire to be utilized as needed. There are still some hot spots in the interior of the Little Devil Fire, but they pose no threat of spread outside containment lines.
This will be the final update on the Little Devil Fire unless significant activity occurs.
A sigh of relief. One lightning-caused fire, brought under control. Our plentiful local forests will remain unburnt; our skies will remain unsullied…
For the moment.
On Thursday, my sister texted me from Seattle to let me know our mother was in the hospital again, apparently suffering from chronic kidney failure. The diagnosis was not clear at the moment, but it sounded likely that Mom might need dialysis if she were to continue living.
Dialysis is a mechanized medical procedure that removes poisons from the blood — a function normally handled by the kidneys. The procedure can be a life-saving measure, especially for folks with acute kidney failure or for folks awaiting a kidney transplant. Chronic kidney failure. on the other hand, typically develops over many years, and is not considered to be reversible, which means that dialysis merely prolongs an inevitable decline.
A kidney transplant for a lovely 90-year-old woman with multiple health issues is probably not in the cards.
Not an easy thing to talk about. Especially, perhaps, when one’s mother is not as mentally acute as she used to be. There comes a point, sometimes, where the kids have to step up and make the final recommendation.
By Sunday, however, Mom was doing much better. The doctors had succeeded in correcting her blood chemistry without resorting to dialysis, and her kidneys were once again limping along as they have been these past several years. The crisis had passed…
For the moment.
Death — not an easy thing to talk about, or even think about. In my mother’s case, we all know very well that the end is approaching, but we don’t really want to discuss the details. Even when we must.
A somewhat different discussion about life and death took place on Thursday afternoon at the August 20 Town Council meeting, when local Firewise coordinator Bill Trimarco brought forward the issue of wildfire in a community surrounded by flammable materials. He was discussing the idea of community-wide fire response assessments, often funded by local governments with help from various grants.
Essentially, he was suggesting that we sit down and really discuss the details. Because the fires are coming, eventually.
“At the very least, what we’re seeing with these assessments, when the various organizations apply for grants to get mitigation work done — if we can show that the community supports it, we can move way up the ladder in these highly competitive grants that come through FEMA or the state. It’s a community-building process where we can all get on the same page, or at least talk about what our priorities are.
“So far, our email list has been through the [Archuelta County] Office of Emergency Management. We will be getting the word out to the newspapers and everything, too, so we can get some more public input. And mostly, I’m just asking for your support of this community-building project.”
Town Council member John Egan asked if individual property owners can access the services offered by Firewise.
Bill Trimarco: “Absolutely, John. Both the Pagosa Fire District and Firewise can send someone out. We don’t charge for that, when we assess someone’s home. We can assess whole neighborhoods, too. Echo Canyon Ranch and Loma Linda both have community protection plans; those go into a lot more detail… And we also do [assessments] on an individual property owner basis.”
John Egan: “And that service is free?”
Bill Trimarco: “Yes.”
John Egan: “It’s like… people would be crazy not to do it, if they had any question about whether their property was in jeopardy.”
Bill Trimarco: “That’s the elephant in the room, John, when we live here. As long as we have woods nears us, and fuels, and lightning strikes, wildfires are going to keep happening. They’ve been going on for thousands of years, and nothing we’re going to do will stop them. We can get ourselves a little better adapted to this type of ecosystem; there have been enough wildfires in the past few years, there’s something of a science developing out of it. We’re finding things that seem to work, and things that don’t. And one of the things that seems to work the best is this community involvement, and like you are saying, the individual assessments of properties.”
Mr. Trimarco noted that tax rebates are available for private mitigation efforts, up to a certain dollar amount — about $7,500 in grant rebates on a $15,000 mitigation project, for example.
“We have some people signed up for that program. We still have money at the moment, and it’s looking like we will have money in the future.
“We’ve attracted some national attention with some of the mitigation work we’ve done here in Archuleta County, on Reservoir Hill and at Four Mile Park and Cloman Park and some of the other programs. So we’d like to keep the ball rolling and remind the rest of the state that we’re doing good work down here in our corner of the state.”
Bill Trimarco can be contacted at archuletafirewise@gmail.com or at 970-264-0430. For more information about Firewise, visit southwestcoloradofires.org