Burning Questions: Ponds, Ponderosas, and more
In today’s installment, we have some information about illegal ponds, wildfire evacuations, guided reforestation on Colorado’s Front Range, and a book review of “A Yellow House in the Mountains.”
If you’re new to Burning Questions, check out our first newsletter here. This is the latest edition to come out of a Colorado College journalism class “Reporting on Wildfires.” In recent weeks we’ve published editions you can read here, here, and here.
Writing this edition are Theo Cherry, Charley Sutherland, Haley Strom, and Katie Rowley.
How Fire Suppression Might be Able to Save ‘Illegal Ponds’ in Colorado
On Sept. 19, Colorado Public Radio published a story about how the state had notified roughly 500 property owners in southern Colorado that their ponds are illegal, with around 9,500 more ponds awaiting review.
Illegal ponds? Who knew, right?
Because of Colorado’s complex water laws, property owners who had ponds might or might not have known that their ponds were potentially illegal. However, in February of last year, through a bipartisan effort, Colorado legislators introduced a bill that would allow people to save their ponds and designate them for fire prevention. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill into law.
It turns out evaporation and improper ways of refilling ponds can hurt downstream water users in the Arkansas River Basin. According to the Colorado Division of Water Resources, “For every acre of pond surface area, up to 1 MILLION gallons of water is lost to evaporation each year.”
But the recent CPR story reported that property owners have a potential out: they could get their ponds designated as “fire suppression ponds” if they want to keep them.
There is a process for this — and it isn’t easy.
Reading the bill and speaking with Mike Weege, fire chief of Evergreen Fire Rescue, provided insight to specific criteria that ponds need to meet if owners want to keep them. Weege acknowledged it might be difficult for someone’s pond to meet all of the requirements:
The pond owner must live in a wildfire-prone area.
The local board of county commissioners and fire authority must request a state engineer to give the pond a fire suppression distinction. (These ponds can be for wildland fires, structure fires, or both.)
For structure fire ponds, there must be a “dry hydrant” installed within two years of its designation to allow year-long access to the water — even when it’s frozen over.
The pond must be at least 48 inches deep.
The pond needs to have kept or gained surface area since June 1, 1972. All younger ponds are ineligible.
There can be no more than 30 acres of pond within the borders of the county.
Ponds must be inspected by the board and a fire authority every year.
A single pond cannot exceed six acres of surface area.
For wildland fire ponds, “80 feet from the perimeter of the pond, nothing can be more than 10 feet high; 160 feet from the perimeter of the pond, nothing can be more than 20 feet high; 240 feet from the perimeter of the pond, 30 feet high; and 320 feet from the perimeter, 40 feet high.”
How can people use these ponds to fight fires?
Water isn’t the only tool used to fight wildfires but is an obvious asset for firefighters. (We wrote about this in a previous newsletter.)
Fire engines and helicopters can come in and fill up their tanks. Helicopters need space to access water — that’s why ponds need a large perimeter to qualify.
It’s likely plenty of Colorado ponds won’t meet the requirements as a fire suppression pond, so residents might lose them, meaning the pond will be filled in. The question is just how many. — Theo
🚨 A Sticky Issue: Evacuating Short Term Rentals During Wildfires in Mountain Communities
When wildfires make a run towards homes, emergency officials rely on reverse 911 calls and social media to tell people in its path to evacuate. But that may not work in vacation communities filled with out-of-town visitors who aren’t registered to receive or don’t understand such warnings.
That became clear as Colorado’s East Troublesome Fire rapidly spread across Grand County in 2020.
Many visitors do not register for reverse 911 and are “just oblivious unless someone knocks on their door,” said Grand Fire Protection District’s Fire Chief and District Administrator Brad White.
In order to receive emergency evacuation notifications in Grand County, you have to register with the town’s CodeRED notification system, and most tourists don’t, he added.
White said the issue is complex, but it’s easiest to start local by communicating with short-term rental owners and visitors, whom he believes share responsibility for being aware of the general fire and evacuation protocols.
“We’re trying to work with our short-term rental owners to get fire and emergency information posted in their unit,” White said.
White encourages short-term rental owners to sign up for CodeRED alerts, so they can notify their renters in the event of an evacuation.
Visitors learn about the area quickly and it doesn’t take long to learn about and sign up for emergency alert notifications. Successful evacuation relies on individuals taking responsibility for their own safety, White said, adding that visitors should be aware of where they are and what’s going on around them.
Another promising development for evacuating short-term rentals is IPAWS evacuation alerts, which function like an AMBER alert. Everyone with a cellphone within a certain radius of a cell tower receives a notification.
IPAWS notifications are effective at rapidly spreading an evacuation message to an extensive population, but oftentimes not everyone who receives the notification actually needs to evacuate.
IPAWS notifications specify evacuation locations, but tourists who receive the notification, and lack familiarity with the area, might evacuate whether they are in the specified evacuation area or not. “Then you end up clogging up the roadways with extra people,” White said.
Perhaps new technology isn’t a solution; maybe the short-term rental evacuation issue can be solved by the technology of yesteryear — the humble landline phone.
Truckee, California is a popular destination for short-term rentals near Lake Tahoe. In 2020, Truckee’s town council passed an ordinance that required short-term rental operators to have a landline phone or internet-connected phone for the purpose of emergency evacuation if they had unreliable cell coverage. A similar measure was recently deemed legal by Arizona’s attorney general in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
Short-term rental owners can register landline phones to receive emergency evacuation alerts — then visitors don’t have to register — but they still receive evacuation notifications in the event of a wildfire.
A representative for Airbnb, the most popular short-term rental company in the United States, declined to comment specifically on landline phone requirements, but provided this statement: “We are committed to working with local officials to help them understand how Airbnb benefits our community. Where needed, we will continue to advocate for changes that will allow people to rent out their own homes.”
White said he has pondered the idea of a wildland fire siren for Grand County.
The town of Vail in neighboring Eagle County is currently piloting one. Vail has a highly concentrated population. Grand County does not.
White said a wildland fire siren would force the county to create a network of sirens, which would be costly, and even then he said he thinks people might assume the fire siren does not concern them. — Charley
🌲 Guided Forest Restoration in Colorado’s Front Range: Ponderosa Pine and Dry Mixed-Conifer
Until 2018, forest ecologists were guided by generalized research on trees across the western United States to restore forests on Colorado’s Front Range damaged by fire, invasive species, and windstorms.
But there’s a growing push for region-specific restoration practices as wildfires burn more land.
A team of scientists with the Front Range Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (FR-CFLRP) wrote a document to guide restoration efforts in the Rocky Mountain Front Range. This document is referred to as GTR-373, meaning “General Technical Report” number 373 — a general name given by the Forest Service to sequentially track their scientific publications.
Paula Fornwalt, forest ecologist with the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins, said forest restoration is not one-size-fits-all. For instance, in Colorado, elevation gradients varying from about 5,000 14,000 feet mean there are many kinds of forests, and therefore, many different kinds of forest restoration. The Front Range is occupied mostly by ponderosa pines and dry-mixed conifers since they are common in dry, lower-elevation areas of the Rocky Mountains. GTR-373 compiles their research on how to restore these two forest types, but this article focuses mainly on ponderosa pine.
Ponderosa pines come into the landscape around 5,600 to 6,000 feet, and become even more prevalent between 6,000 and 7,000 feet. Historically, they burned from natural fires, about every one to 35 years at lower elevations of 7,800 feet on the northern Front Range and 8,200 feet on the southern Front Range. These fires mostly burned surface fuels like pine needles and remained low-severity.
According to Fornwalt, after low-severity burns in ponderosa forests, “the regrowth just looks great. (The land) is probably more analogous now to the way it was historically because the stands are more open.”
When ponderosas die after low-to-moderate-severity fires, there is opportunity for more ponderosas to grow. Canopy openings are created, allowing sunlight to hit the forest floor. This prevents competitive species that prefer to grow in the shade from overtaking ponderosas. Openings also make room for ponderosa seedlings to grow since they thrive in sunlight.
“But in certain places, that’s certainly not true, especially as you get closer to civilization or if the area had a long history of land use where there was sustained grazing on it or just intensive use in general,” Fornwalt said.
Historically, ponderosa forests in the Front Range were less dense than they are today. Euro-American settlement in the 1850s introduced logging, grazing, and altered fire regimes, which led to denser forests and higher-severity burns, a departure from the historical, low-to-moderate-severity patterns. After these bigger fires, regrowth does not look as good.
Following high-severity burns in ponderosa forests where most trees burned, there is a lack of natural tree regeneration because there are not enough seed trees and the soil is too dry. Given the lack of natural tree regeneration, restoration can enhance landscape resilience.
To create a benchmark for recovery, researchers refer to the Historical Range of Variability, or HRV. The HRV refers to the conditions before Euro-American settlement. From analyzing old trees and fire-scarred stumps, researchers found that healthy forests are self-sustaining, meaning they can withstand disturbances and rebound.
The HRV helps researchers create a set of guidelines for restoration in the Rocky Mountain Front Range. One of the guidelines includes acknowledging the changing nature of the Rocky Mountain Front Range forests, and how disturbances like wildfire have helped sustain the Front Range historically.
“What makes a forest healthy is its ability to function the way it was designed to function,” Fornwalt said. “Particularly in the West, this involves its ability to weather disturbance regimes.”
One thing the HRV does not give sufficient insight into is how climate change impacts disturbance regimes. Because of this, HRV insights are balanced with knowledge of the challenges posed by climate change.
Some restoration strategies considering climate change include reducing forest densities, especially in drought areas, to minimize the risk of crown fires; reintroducing low-to mixed-severity fire through prescribed fire to reduce fuel loads; and promoting drought-and-fire-tolerant species such as ponderosa pine.
Silviculturist Jim Gerleman is one of these stakeholders who uses this research to guide restoration in the Pike – San Isabel National Forests and Comanche – Cimarron National Grasslands.
“I would say that GTR-373 has guided our work immensely since its publication a few years ago … included in that were lessons learned from earlier projects, and promoting use of the adaptive management model,” Gerleman said.
“Our treatments on the Pike and San Isabel National Forest evolved from those lessons learned, particularly on thinning stands more and removing more Douglas-fir, to improve the ponderosa pine component,” he added.
While this article outlines some of the latest research on restoration in the Front Range, refer to GTR-373 for the whole story. Especially if you work on public or private lands in the Front Range, or if you work with the Forest Service or U.S. Department of Agriculture . These guidelines are for you. — Haley
⛰️ 🏠 BOOK REVIEW: ‘A Yellow House in the Mountains’
In 2020, the East Troublesome Fire ripped through Grand County, ultimately burning over 190,000 acres and becoming the second-largest fire in Colorado. Grand County is located in the north-central Rocky Mountains and has a population of about 16,000.
Although the fire started on Oct. 14, strong winds caused the flames to rapidly spread near Grand Lake on Oct. 21. This escalation proved deadly for Lyle and Marilyn Hileman who, despite evacuation orders, stayed in their home located adjacent to Rocky Mountain National Park. In the days following the Hileman’s deaths, their families, specifically son Glenn Hileman, recounted to various media outlets their final moments and the importance of their property.
As the-three year anniversary of the East Troublesome Fire approaches, Hileman’s memory of his parents still burns brightly. In his self-published debut novel, “A Yellow House in the Mountains,” released in 2023, Glenn Hileman delves into a fictitious biography, recounting his parents’ lives and deaths. (I say fictitious because, despite seemingly being a work of creative nonfiction, the copyright page states: “Any reference to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.”)
Despite this assertion that Hileman’s book is a work of literary fiction, the preface asserts that “the events described in this story are true.” So, for casual readers of the book who might not be reading the copyright page, this is essentially a biography.
Hileman opens by detailing his father’s life, spending the first six chapters recounting various moves, dying dogs, and the theft of tires that lead to Lyle running away to Natchez, Mississippi. These chapters end with Lyle seeing Marilyn for the first time outside of their shared high school: love at first sight.
The book then pivots to focus on Marilyn’s childhood, spending only a chapter here. Most of the anecdotal content focuses on her father and his Yugoslav heritage. Marilyn’s story very quickly intertwines with Lyle’s, and by chapter 10, the couple is faced with teenage pregnancy and engagement.
Much of the rest of the book is composed of anecdotes of Lyle and Marilyn’s young adulthood as they raise five children in Denver. The couple was married in Georgetown, spending their honeymoon in Grand Lake; it was during their honeymoon that the couple proclaimed wanting a “big, beautiful yellow house in the mountains.” Hileman follows this desire for the next 15 chapters, detailing the various jobs Lyle and Marilyn undertook to support their family and build their dream house.
One of these jobs Lyle helped with was the construction of the Bar D-M Ranch with friend Max Pitcher. This ranch would perish in the East Troublesome Fire.
Hileman then shifts to the lives of his parents after they have sold their house in Denver, moving full-time to their yellow house in the mountains. Until the recounting of their deaths, Lyle and Marilyn faced some serious hardships (cue a strangling and limb detachment via tractor. Interested in the details? You can buy the book here.) But, despite these hardships, the couple was still able to spend time with their children and grandchildren, author Glenn Hileman’s family being featured heavily as he awkwardly recounts family traditions, speaking about himself in third person.
The book ends with speculation on the Hilemans’ final moments after seeking refuge in their basement bunker. These final chapters are tragic: mentioning land mitigation, a backpack filled with emergency essentials, and a quote in which Marilyn calls Glenn to tell him, “Well, it happened.”
Readers can conjecture that the Hilemans knew a fire was possible. They were prepared for it. But, as Hileman spends much of the book attempting to show, their house, and the time invested into it, were too important to leave.
The novel ends quite sweetly, with Glenn and the other Hileman children spreading Hilemans’ ashes on the property.
Hileman’s grief over losing his parents is evident, particularly in the chapters about and following their death, but the majority of the book seems to lack this grief. In an attempt to provide readers with the entire chronology of his parents’ lives, it is clear that much of Hileman’s knowledge about his parents relies on anecdotes. Anecdotes that may be crazy and entertaining, yet lack emotion and fail to make his parents complex, dynamic characters.
One of the best pieces of writing advice anyone ever gets — and gets all the time — is “show don’t tell.” Instead of explaining how your characters feel, describe their reactions; let your readers infer your characters' feelings. I think, as a writer, Hileman might benefit from letting his audience make assumptions about his parents and their inner emotions towards each other, their children, and themselves.
But, when writing from your own personal story, it is hard to break away from the preconceived stories and emotions that have impacted you. It is hard to write something that could be conceived as negative or disparaging towards people you have loved. I understand the struggle, and if Hileman had perhaps focused more on his experience with the yellow house and his parents’ love from an outsider’s perspective, he may have been able to create a more genuine, complex story.
The ambiguity surrounding the genre of Hileman’s work lends to a less developed story. If the author committed to a work of pure fiction or a work of pure nonfiction, he would have more availability to play with either creating a more focused story line, or delving deeper into lived experiences.
Despite these critiques — and that the book, or at least the e-book, might have benefited from a copyeditor — Hileman’s love for his parents and their story is evident, and he may not have intended for “A Yellow House in the Mountains” to reach audiences who did not also love his parents.
Attempts to reach Hileman to talk about his book and intentions were unsuccessful. — Katie
You’re reading Burning Questions, a newsletter produced out of the Colorado College Journalism Institute with support from a National Science Foundation grant. Students produced this editions in their class “Reporting on Wildfires” in the fall of 2023. Learn more about this newsletter here. 📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get Burning Questions delivered to your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach us with questions, feedback, or tips by emailing burningquestionscc@gmail.com