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The O. Zone: Coming to Vail this summer? Leave fireworks, risky fire behavior at home
The Red Canyon Fire near Wolcott on Wednesday (Eagle Valley Wildland Facebook photo).
If you’re signed up for Eagle County emergency alerts (and if you’re not, please stop reading right now and do it), you’ve been getting pinged with texts lately saying, “There is a Red Flag Warning for Eagle County. Fire restrictions will apply.”
I reached out the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office a while back to see what that actually means. Turns out, “Red Flag Warnings are … triggered by alerts sent out by the National Weather Service. Eagle County’s fire restriction ordinance was updated in June of 2019, which implements automatic fire restrictions during specific periods of a ‘Red Flag Warning’ when issued throughout unincorporated Eagle County, excluding Federal lands.”
That was in an email from a very helpful sheriff’s spokesperson, who then sent me this link: “The updated ordinance clarifies what is allowed and not allowed; you can find a detailed breakdown here: https://sites.google.com/eaglecounty.us/ecemergency/fire-restrictions”.
High winds, low humidity, lack of moisture – all of these factor into the issuing of a Red Flag Warning that then kicks in the current Stage 1 Fire Restrictions that prohibit personal fireworks, outdoor burning outside of a fire pit, ring or grate, outdoors flames in something with no shutoff valve, like a chiminea, tiki torch or a charcoal grill, and outdoor smoking out in the woods (see chart below).
These are all reasonable restrictions, and frankly, we’ve gotten to a place where we should probably just go with Stage 1 restrictions all summer. Fire season started in April this year, and the spring runoff is already almost done. We’ve had very little moisture lately, and federal emergency response agencies have been gutted by budget and staffing cuts.
Wednesday, as I was texting with my wife who was stuck at a meeting in Eagle while a fire raged in Red Canyon near Wolcott, it really struck home how our narrow valley with limited road capacity is particularly vulnerable to massive wildfires – more than 80% of which are started by human activity. I-70 is often overwhelmed for no apparent reason; imagine a wildfire evacuation.
That night I was stunned by the stupidity of somebody firing off aerial fireworks near my home in EagleVail, which is in unincorporated Eagle County and therefore subject to the current fire restrictions. All forms of personal fireworks are currently prohibited, so shooting them off near the dense woods leading up to Beaver Creek seems particularly risky.
Forecasters are calling for a long, hot, dry summer in Colorado, and climate change has made wildland fires more frequent, more intense and harder to predict. So it seems sensible to use the utmost caution and create a zero-tolerance mindset for our resort communities. Sorry, VRBOers – and careless locals – this is not the go-to spot for risky fire behavior. Take it elsewhere.
Back in April, Eagle County Commissioner Jeanne McQueeney told me she was very worried about cuts to federal spending on wildfire mitigation, emergency response and even funding for the National Weather Service that monitors conditions and helps the county produce alerts. Vail Fire Chief Mark Novak expressed those same sentiments earlier this month.
McQueeney thought perhaps a preemptive approach to the summer season was in order, with fire bans more of the norm than the exception:
“We don’t need to wait until there’s a high winds and people are out there camping to say there’s a fire ban that might likely go into the summer camping season … just because some of these fuels mitigation projects haven’t been done, we might not have enough wildland firefighters to respond, that kind of thing,” McQueeney said at the time.
“We can’t wait for when we know there’s not going be the ability for a robust response,” McQueeney added. “Maybe we should sort of cut down on the likelihood of needing that. But again, that’s just something we’ve started to hear that others are thinking of, and we really do need to circle up with our sheriff and see how he feels about that. He’s the one that has that authority.”
I would say call the sheriff and let him know how you feel about it, too.
Temperatures are supposed to cool off a little next week, with a chance of rain midweek, but I agree with our county commissioner that perhaps it’s wise to keep restrictions in place as we head into the Fourth of July holiday.
I’ve got my go bag ready and will be on high alert in EagleVail. The sheriff’s office will be hearing from me frequently if we continue to have rogue fireworks going off, because I honestly don’t have a lot of faith that federal wildland firefighters will be able to respond as vigorously as they have in the past, and our government in general these days seems a bit distracted and shaky.
So let’s take it upon ourselves to avoid a disastrous wildfire season.
Editor’s note: The O. Zone is a recurring opinion column by RealVail.com publisher David O. Williams. Please read how you can help support this site by considering a donation or signing up for news alerts … or both.
David O. Williams
