‘Fire knows no boundaries:’ What a joint protection effort looks like in Avon
Wildridge is particularly vulnerable to wildfires due to its location and isolation
Vail Daily archive
Certain areas of Avon are at high risk in the event of a fast-moving wildfire. To stay prepared, the town’s police department, in collaboration with the Eagle River Fire Protection District and Eagle Valley Wildland, continually improves and rehearses the town’s emergency evacuation plans.
Greg Daly, Avon’s chief of police, Coby Cosper, Avon’s deputy chief of police, Mick Woodworth, Eagle River Fire Protection District division chief, and Hugh Fairfield-Smith, fire management officer with Eagle Valley Wildland, presented on the town’s fire mitigation and preparedness efforts to the Town Council on Tuesday.
Wildridge’s location and isolation make it vulnerable to fires
Avon’s Wildridge community is particularly vulnerable to wildfires due to its location and isolation. The community has one main road in and out — Metcalf Road — and one emergency egress, via the Singletree connector.
White River National Forest abuts Wildridge to the north, posing additional fire risk due to challenges in mitigating the forest’s fuel sources.
Wildridge is not alone; many of the communities on the north side of Interstate 70 in Edwards and Avon are particularly vulnerable to wildfires.
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“Fire knows no boundaries, so we are going to treat it as such,” Fairfield-Smith said. “If a fire gets big enough in Wolcott, we’d have to evacuate Wildridge and Cordillera Valley Club and Singletree”
Daly said that a large, fast-moving fire in Wolcott could reach Avon in an hour.
The response to the Ute Creek Fire that broke out in a compost pile near the county landfill in Wolcott Saturday was coordinated with this concern in mind.
As part of the firefighting effort, Fairfield-Smith ordered several aircraft to drop retardant on the fire, including a larger tanker, single-engine tankers similar to crop dusters, and the largest possible helicopter.
“We threw absolutely everything we needed to at that to ensure that it did not move,” Fairfield-Smith said. “There are all kinds of different sizes of aviation, and we will never hesitate to order the most to ensure that we can put it to bed quickly and swiftly to keep our community safe.”
Eagle Valley Wildland clears fuel sources, puts in fuel breaks to protect Avon, Wildridge
Eagle Valley Wildland has been working to clear fire fuel sources from Wildridge for years, an offensive tactic to protect the community from wildfire ignition and spread. Last year, the organization focused on slowing structure-to-structure ignitability, thinning six areas, putting in one tactical fuel break and burning 500 fuel piles. Avon has contributed $80,000 to the mitigation efforts.
By state law, pile burning can only occur on days when the weather conditions align so that smoke lifts up and out of the community, which limits pile burning efforts. “There were only six good burning days in all of Eagle County last year, and about five of those fell on very busy holidays, as well,” Fairfield-Smith said.
While Eagle Valley Wildland has performed mitigation efforts on the public lands surrounding Wildridge, national forest land poses a problem.
“Typically, it is very difficult for non-federal agencies to do work on federal land,” Fairfield-Smith said.
Last year, Eagle Valley Wildland took part in a non-funded cost-share agreement, allowing the organization to pay to conduct fuels reduction in areas of the White River National Forest that have already had National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) studies completed on them.
“We have the ability, through this contract, to treat federal land,” Fairfield-Smith said.
Through the agreement, Eagle Valley Wildland treated 430 acres above Singletree and west of the June Creek drainage.
Some areas on Red and White Mountain have had NEPA studies done, Fairfield-Smith said, and he has been “working to try to understand the outcome of those studies and what the treatment methodologies would be, but in theory, we can use the grant funding to pay for those areas that have had the study done.”
In the areas that have not yet had a NEPA study conducted, Eagle Valley Wildland will have the ability, through the non-funded cost-share agreement, to pay for a NEPA study. This can take up to five years if the federal government conducts the study, or two months if the process is expedited by hiring a contractor, Fairfield-Smith said.
Avon police and partners practice Wildridge evacuation to prepare for unknowns
The Avon Police Department held its annual Wildridge evacuation exercise on May 23, a drill that tests the functionality of technology and communications systems in partnership with the Eagle River Fire Protection District and Eagle Valley Wildland.
Avon has three sirens in Wildridge, one in Wildwood and one in Mountain Star. On Friday, the sirens went off three times, and Avon police officers went door to door in the selected section of Wildridge checking that homeowners could hear the sirens. Officers also tested the town’s emergency declaration process and flew a drone over Wildridge to provide a live aerial view of the landscape.
While not tested during the drill, the secondary evacuation route from Wildridge to Singletree has been completed, with gates at the top and bottom to which Avon police and public works and the Eagle River Fire Protection District fire department have code access. During an evacuation, personnel would be stationed at the top and bottom to control traffic.
Wildridge evacuation planning efforts are not physically limited to the community. “When we’re planning out an evacuation, we’re planning all the way to Vail, all the way to Eagle in relation to getting people out of the subdivision,” Daly said.
Evacuation planning includes considering atypical events, such as a helicopter gathering water from Nottingham Lake in the heart of Avon to drop on the fire. If this were to occur, Interstate 70 would need to be temporarily shut down while the helicopters flew over, Daly said.
In another scenario, if helicopters need to drop fire retardant on Wildridge, power would need to be cut to the subdivision, forcing Eagle River Water & Sanitation’s water providing efforts to rely on backup generators to move water uphill. (But when fighting wildfires, firefighters rely more on retardant than on water.)
If a wildfire hits in Wildridge — or anywhere in Avon — the most critical evacuation-related information will be disseminated via EC alerts, Daly said. “We may set off the sirens, but they are literally just to look at your phone to see what that information is.”
Sign up for EC Alerts at ECEmergency.org.
