Colorado Law Will Require Homes to Be More Wildfire Resistant

“And it gives us the flexibility we need to make sure we don’t add costs to homeowners,” he said.

Efforts to adopt a statewide code began gaining momentum after the December 2021 Marshall Fire, the most destructive in state history. Driven by hurricane-force winds and overgrown grasslands, it killed two people and incinerated 1,084 residences and seven businesses within hours. Financial losses from the fire are expected to top $2 billion.

A little-known subcommittee of the Colorado Fire Commission recommended the creation of a board to design a uniform wildfire building code after Polis sent a letter in 2021 that was critical of lawmakers’ failure to “address a critical piece of the wildfire puzzle in Colorado: land use planning, development and building resiliency in the wildland-urban interface.”

Lawmakers took the recommendations to heart and tried to pass such a measure last year in the waning days of the legislative session, but the effort failed in the face of stiff opposition from municipalities and builders.

ProPublica reviewed legislation introduced from 2014 to 2022 and found that only 15 out of 77 wildfire-related bills focused primarily on helping homeowners mitigate risk from fires. Most of the 15 proposals offered incentives to homeowners and communities through income tax deductions or grants — some of which required municipalities to raise matching funds — to clear vegetation around structures. None called for mandatory building requirements in wildfire-prone areas, even as 15 of the 20 largest wildfires in state history have occurred since 2012.

Such safety codes usually require fire-resistant materials on siding, roofs, decks and fences, along with mesh-covered vents that prevent embers from entering the building. These measures have been scientifically proven to reduce risk for residents and rescuers and to increase the odds that structures will withstand a blaze.

After the new panel begins work this fall, it must first define what’s known as the “wildland-urban interface,” or WUI, where homes mix with trees, shrubs and grasses that make them more vulnerable to fire. Following the Marshall Fire, ProPublica found, firefighters agreed that practically the entire state could fall under this high-risk designation.

A common understanding of which areas are at risk will help officials prioritize resources to protect communities, said Jefferson County Commissioner Lesley Dahlkemper. Her community enacted one of the state’s most stringent wildfire building standards in 2020.

“If you asked each of us to define the WUI right now, we would all give you a different answer,” she added.

State Sen. Lisa Cutter, who spent months shepherding the code board bill through discussions with community leaders, builders, firefighters and others, said once the minimum building code is published by the board, the responsibility will fall to individual municipalities to enact it.

“This is now state law,” said Cutter, who represents some of the state’s most fire-prone communities. “Everyone will have to have a minimum standard code, and it helps communities hold each other responsible.”

As she stood in front of uniformed firefighters and a fire engine, Cutter said she and her co-sponsors made concessions to ensure communities have flexibility to tailor fire-resilient codes to meet their needs, including giving municipalities the ability to petition the board for modification to the codes. Such compromises were necessary to pass the law in a state with a longstanding culture of local control.

In debating the building code board bill, legislators heard emotional testimony from firefighters forced to repeatedly defend their communities against deeply unpredictable wildfires.

In testimony before a state Senate committee on March 16, Grand Fire Protection District Chief Brad White recounted how the 193,812-acre East Troublesome Fire in 2020 traveled 25 miles overnight and incinerated 366 homes, so far costing $720 million.

“Two-and-a-half years later, these costs are not what bother me,” White said as he asked the Senate Local Government & Housing Committee to support the bill. “What bothers me is that of those 366 homes, we saved many of them several times before.”

Jennifer Oldham is a freelance journalist. This story was originally published by ProPublica.