Photo: Archuleta County Sheriff Mike Le Roux discusses the County’s emergency planning process related to potential wildfires, with the Board of County Commissioners and staff, January 21, 2025.
Continuing with the January 21 presentation by Archuleta County Sheriff Mike Le Roux, to the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners.
“We have three fire protection districts that cover private lands here within the County. Obviously, we have the Pagosa Fire Protection District, which is the bulk of the unincorporated. The last time I checked — and don’t quote me on this — they cover about 350 square miles within their district, and that obviously includes structure fires, but also wildland fire within those properties…”
“We have Los Pinos, which covers Arboles… I think it goes up to mile marker 36 on County Road 500… up to the road that we used to call the Old Gallegos Road…
“And then we have Upper Pine, which covers a section of Highway 160, up to the top of Yellowjacket Pass…
“Everything else, which I’ll show you on this map, belongs to the Sheriff’s Office, which is about 220 square miles of wildland fire district, exclusively…”
He noted that the County owns one piece of firefighting equipment and leases two other pieces “at the competitive rate of $200 a year from the state of Colorado. Between those three apparatus we have the ability to carry 1,500 gallons of water as we navigate some of the areas that I’ll show you here.”
When the Sheriff says, “220 square miles of wildland fire district, exclusively”, I believe he means that the areas within his jurisdiction have very few, if any, structures.
Here’s the Daily Post map we shared yesterday in Part One, showing the National Forest in brown… the Pagosa Fire Protection District in pink… the Southern Ute Reservation in cream… and the 220 square miles of County responsibility — privately owned land — in shades of green. (The minor coverage by the Upper Pine and Los Pinos districts is not indicated.)
You can click the map to view an enlarged version.
“When you start to look at it, it’s a pretty crazy patchwork of jurisdictional complexities…”
Between all of the districts and agency, the County is covered. More or less.
“Our Multi-Year Operating Plan is a five-year plan that has about 14 signatories. I’m obviously one of them. The Forest Service, the Fire District, BIA, BLM, all the neighboring counties, the Division of Fire Prevention and Control, which is the state-based fire agency. And what that document spells out is the mandatory mutual aid component that lies within the agencies. Now, we’ve always had excellent working relationships with all of our partners, so the document, until now, has never really been tested. We’ve never had to say, ‘You signed this piece of paper, therefore you shall respond.’ Everybody responds to everybody’s fire, all the time, with whatever resources they can.
“Because we realize where we are. We’re at the end of nowhere, which is why we live here, and why we love it. But getting resources from further afield tends to have issues, and there are time constraints getting here. So the Multi-Year Operating Plan sets out our mutual responsibilities..”
A previous agreement specified that agencies had to respond only if the fire was within a certain distance to their district. The new agreement is for everyone to respond anywhere within the county during the first 24 hours of the event.
“With that agreement, the state Division of Fire Prevention and Control — they are our partners and help us navigate the costs of that. They set up a program… which is basically front-loading state assets within that first 24-hour mutual aid period, which is free to the county. We all realize that every big fire starts as a small fire, and every big cost started as a small cost. It’s better to front-load the fire assistance so the local jurisdiction can get their arms around it as quickly as possible, to prevent the million-dollar fires, as they so often become.
“To give you an idea, last time I checked, a SEAT — Single Engine Air Tanker, a small place — can carry about 800 gallons of fire retardant… that’s in the region of about $5,500 per hour… they drop that and then fly back to Durango to fill up. $5,500 an hour. So when you start looking at the bigger air tankers, like a LAT — Large Air Tanker — you can be looking at upwards of $400,000 per day… it starts racking up pretty quickly…”
Hopefully, as much as possible is done to get “some sort of containment” in the first 24 hours, when the state is covering the costs.
The Sheriff rolled out a different map, showing some of the planning work done recently by the Forest Service, specifying certain areas of the county where the danger to people and structures and infrastructure is especially acute. He mentioned the recent Chris Mountain Fire, near Aspen Springs, and the cooperation that kept that fire from spreading, with presumably disastrous results..
“That’s not the last time will are going to get fires in that area.”
“One of the better forms of mitigation is existing burn scars, right? So it’s been proven that a fire, moving along, tends to reduce its intensity in areas of low fuel.
“So what the Forest Service did, was they mapped this entire area for us… and these maps indicate ‘trigger points’ for us. So when a fire is moving forward, toward assets at risk — Aspen Springs, the County over here, these private ranches, PLPOA over there — these orange line are ‘trigger points’ which tell us, ‘If the fire hits this area, then this… and if this, then that’… and determines what we do.
“It’s not a ‘one-and-done’ solution, but for sure, it’s identifying areas of risk… and this is based on historical data, and two fires in the same area.
“Information and knowledge is power. I think the fact that they’ve been able to identify these trigger point… it’s product they Forest Service has shared with us.”
What I took away from the presentation:
Where wildland fire is concerned, it’s a delicate balancing act between letting the forest burn — knowing that this will inhibit the intensity of future fires — and getting the damn fire under control within the first 24 hours.