Wildfire

Boulder is at risk of being overwhelmed by fast-moving wildfire. It's not a question of if the right conditions will come together to cause catastrophe, but when. And with windy red flag days on the rise, the chances are worsening. The good news is we can adapt our community to this threat. This is issue personal to me. My wife, Steph, and I fled the Bay Area after multiple summers of unlivable wildfire smoke, and Steph held a leadership position at PG&E during their wildfire response and public safety power shutoffs. California is a decade ahead of Colorado in learning how to live with wildfire, and I bring that experience with me.

What I'm Working On

I've focused on turning the risk of a wildfire catastrophe into a comprehensive program of community collective protections enabling Boulder to live and succeed under conditions that are inherently fire-prone.

A citywide hardening strategy. Set a goal for collective hardening of Boulder's buildings, landscapes, and grid at a scale that protects against fast-moving wildfire, a package spanning departments and geography, from dense blocks to the edge of open space. It's a ratcheting, probability-driven approach, the same one I'm applying at my own home—highest-risk, easiest wins first, then raising the bar in stages. Already expanded the wildland-urban interface hardening zone from about 4,600 to more than 16,000 properties and adopted new construction and landscaping standards; next is holding the whole city to that standard, including fixing power reliability with Xcel, since wildfire mitigation and grid reliability have to be solved together. Alongside that, pursuing no-regrets options now, such asservices educating homeowners before they make long-term commitments like a new wood fence, targeting the highest-impact required upgrades, like removing junipers at select locations, and exploring behavior management on red flag days.

A hardening services marketplace. Boulder's free home wildfire assessments tell residents what to fix, but there's no standard workflow yet connecting that assessment to a provider who leads the work through to completion. Build that connective tissue and real private capital follows, along with a clearer picture of what's working, including in the rental market, where under 1 percent of assessments completed so far have been for a rental. Building it means a true one-transaction handoff, where a provider picks up or performs the assessment and manages every trade and the reporting back to the city, which leads on rules, standards, and enforcement. It means developing the professional practice behind hardening services with clear standards in collaboration with the county, region, and state. And it means playing a role in making the market where materials are hard to find, like affordable metal fencing and odd-sized siding retrofits, since this is still an emerging corner of climate adaptation services.

Stronger plans for evacuation and egress. Bringing a scientific approach to how Boulder would move people to safety in an emergency, since the intuitive answer, just build wider roads, isn't necessarily the right one, and getting this right means strengthening the multimodal plan already underway, transit included, so people who don't or can't drive are accounted for. Also focused on community readiness, clear decision-making in the moment, and the neighbor-to-neighbor checking-in that matters as much as any city system, plus identifying the vulnerable populations, aging residents especially, who need the most attention during an emergency and in the city's power resilience work.

What's Next

I'm working to:

☐ Get clear on success metrics for hardening, quantifying protection at the parcel level and calculating the collective protection created as more properties join in

☐ Build and test the one-transaction marketplace, starting with households who've already completed an assessment, before scaling citywide

☐ Work through the tradeoffs between grid reliability and fire safety with Xcel, since the two have to be solved together

☐ Require landlords to complete wildfire risk assessments, and find real solutions to bring renters into home hardening, since under 1 percent of assessments so far have been for a rental

☐ Build a public, cost and benefit-ranked list of fire-adapted investments, with need-based financial help so cost isn't a barrier

☐ Develop a redevelopment protocol in case a significant part of Boulder is affected by disaster

What We Stand to Gain

Cut the costs of living. Wildfire hardening directly addresses rising home insurance costs, and insurers leaving the market, both of which raise the cost of staying in Boulder.

Adapting to a changing world. This is the priority most directly about that goal, protecting the community from the exact risk this pillar exists to address.

Creating a trustworthy, effective government. A public, cost-ranked list of investments is what a government residents can rely on looks like.

Climate-aligned decisions. Wildfire risk is a direct, worsening consequence of climate change, and hardening now is climate adaptation in its most concrete form.