Wildfire

CU Research on Marshall Fire Looks to the Future

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 07:00:00 +0000

CU Research on Marshall Fire Looks to the Future Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/06/2023 - 00:00

Kelsey Simpkins

More than a year after the costliest wildfire in Colorado history, dozens of CU Boulder researchers continue to explore the science behind what happened on Dec. 30, 2021, the widespread impacts the Marshall Fire has had on people, pets and the environment, and how we can mitigate future catastrophes amid a changing climate.

CONVERGE — a National Science Foundation funded collaboration established in 2018 to identify, train and support disaster research — is in large part responsible for the speed, coordination and sensitivity of this fact-finding response. After the Marshall Fire, CONVERGE quickly mobilized to organize several virtual forums — the first of which led to the establishment of the Marshall Fire Unified Research Survey, which involves dozens of researchers working together to reduce the research burden on affected communities while learning from their experiences.

“In my 20 years of being a researcher, I have never seen this kind of coordinated research effort,” said sociology professor Lori Peek, who leads CONVERGE, housed at the long-standing CU Boulder-based Natural Hazards Center, which she also directs.

Researchers in engineering, chemistry, and environmental science at CU Boulder, CIRES and NOAA continue to examine the invisible damage and risks to indoor air quality caused by smoke and pollutants in affected homes and buildings. Other CU Boulder engineering faculty and graduate students are collecting data and conducting preliminary analyses on the complexities of decision-making when rebuilding post-fire.

Scientists continue to sample and analyze local soil and water, looking for clues about potential contamination. Furthermore, ecologists are working on the challenge of grassland fire mitigation to reduce future catastrophes.

Reporting by CMCI journalism students has also brought the impacts of the Marshall Fire into sharper focus, while academics in the anthropology department have joined the Marshall Fire Story Project to record stories of how the fire impacted the lives of people across the county.

This ongoing work will benefit those impacted by the Marshall Fire, and future communities who face fast-moving flames and other climate-fueled disasters.

“This is not something we’re done dealing with,” said Peek.

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Photo courtesy Casey A. Cass

Scientists focusing on affected communities and ways to improve post-disaster responses.

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Marshall Fire Devastates CU Boulder Community

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Marshall Fire Devastates CU Boulder Community Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/11/2022 - 00:00

Sarah Kuta

Matt Sparkman (Mgmt’16) was enjoying a relaxing day off from work at his home in Marshall when he stepped outside and smelled smoke on Dec. 30.

Sparkman, who works as senior program manager for principal gifts in the CU Boulder advancement office, ran into the house to grab some warm clothes and a scarf to cover his face. By the time he got back outside, he could see black smoke billowing over the ridgeline west of his house.

“I decided that, with the wind as strong as it was, I was just going to leave,” he said. “I didn’t take anything, I was just like, ‘I have to get out of here.’”

Sparkman safely evacuated to his parents’ house in South Boulder just in time. As the fire barreled east toward Superior, and then Louisville, it reduced the cozy rental cottage where he’d spent the last four years to a pile of charred rubble.

So far, he’s maintaining a positive outlook about losing all of his belongings — he knows he can replace them easily enough. But Sparkman is still mourning the damage caused to the landscape and the fact that he’ll have to move out of Marshall, the small, unincorporated community just south of Boulder and east of Hwy. 93.

“More so than missing things, it's the ability to just go out my door and go for a run, go link up to Marshall Mesa so quickly, the neighborhood community — those are the things I miss most about Marshall,” he said. “It’s just sad to see the scorched landscape and the trees. It was such a unique place because you had creeks,you had huge trees, you had open space. I’d see all sorts of birds and wildlife, and it’ll take some time for the land to look like it used to.”

Sparkman is just one of the many CU Boulder community members affected by the Marshall Fire, which forced an estimated 899 students and 771 faculty and staff members to evacuate. It ultimately damaged or destroyed approximately 155 of their homes.

All told, the blaze destroyed 1,084 homes and damaged 149 others in Louisville, Superior and unincorporated Boulder County, causing more than $500 million in damage to residences, according to Boulder County totals. As of press time, one death was confirmed from the fire.

For many people, the disaster was a wakeup call: Front Range communities and subdivisions are susceptible to wildfires, just like the Colorado mountain homes surrounded by trees. According to Jennifer Balch, a leading fire scientist and CU Boulder associate professor of geography, it was only a matter of time before a fast-moving urban wildfire like this one swept through a heavily populated area.

Research led by Balch and colleagues in Earth Lab, part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at CU Boulder, found that 1 million U.S. homes were within wildfire perimeters over the last two decades, and 59 million others were within a kilometer. They also found that humans were responsible for touching off 97% of wildfires that threatened homes over the same period.

Taken together, the findings paint an already harrowing picture about the potential dangers wildfires pose to residential areas. Add to that rising temperatures, drought, dry grasses and strong winds brought on by big temperature swings — factors researchers say are linked to climate change — and the West could experience more destructive wildfires like the Marshall Fire in the very near future, Balch said.

“I can tell you for sure that we're going to have another event like this at some point — I don’t know where and I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but our communities are at risk,” said Balch, whose team is already making plans to study the Marshall Fire. “Our ecosystems are adapted to fire, we’ve just put a lot [of structures] in the way and now we have to reckon with that. To me, this is climate change in the here and now in Colorado.”

While many people were fleeing the fire’s path, Ryan Chreist (Kines’96;MPubAd’09), who lives just north of Louisville, headed straight into the blaze. On top of his job as assistant vice chancellor and executive director of the CU Boulder Alumni Association, Chreist serves as a volunteer firefighter with the Louisville Fire Department, a post he's held since 2002.

For 14 hours, Chreist helped battle the fire on the ground in Louisville. In addition to using hoses to fight the flames engulfing structures, trees, bushes and grass to try to slow the spread to other houses, he used wildland tools to cut down wooden fences and remove grass and brush to keep them from catching fire. When He finally got home a little after 3 a.m., he was exhausted and covered in ash and soot; the fire had singed his hair andthe constant barrage of smoke and debris made it painful to keep his eyes open.

Though it took Chreist a few days to process the “apocalyptic” scenes he'd witnessed while fighting the fire, he said,eventually, the sense of loss began to hit him in waves.

But as he began to reflect on all that Boulder County has been through in recent years — the 2013 floods, the pandemic, the King Soopers shooting, other wildfires — he also found himself thinking about something more hopeful: resilience. In all of those instances, the community immediately stepped up and found ways to help, both big and small.

“We tend to think of ourselves as being separated by the name of our towns, but really, we’re all dealing with the same benefits and challenges of living in this place,” he said. “Things like this bring the community together in the long run. We’re all in this together.”

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Photos by Matt Tyrie and Glenn Asakawa

Drought, dry grass and gusting winds lead to wildfire.

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Editor's Note: Spring 2022

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Editor's Note: Spring 2022 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/11/2022 - 00:00

Maria Kuntz

On Dec. 30, I sipped coffee at Caffe Sole as hurricane-force winds crashed over the Flatirons. Customers were stunned — unsure where to go as wind swirled into dust cyclones and awnings quaked, tearing at the building’s facade. These winds fueled the Marshall Fire — the most devastating wild-fire in Colorado history.

This fire as well as other recent tragedies — the King Soopers shooting and the Calwood fire in northwest Boulder— will leave indelible marks on CU Boulder's students, faculty and staff. And they will impact and inform future research, teaching and creative works.

In the midst of nearby tragedy, this Coloradan also aims to celebrate Buffs’ successes while exploring topics like the future of work, the Chicano movement and women's health in Bangladesh. I hope it bolsters you as part of the Forever Buffs community because, as we've recently witnessed first-hand, we are stronger as Buffs Together.

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Editor Maria Kuntz shares her Marshall Fire experience.

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Coloradan on the Radio: Wildfire with Author Michael Kodas

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 19:26:35 +0000

Coloradan on the Radio: Wildfire with Author Michael Kodas Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/14/2018 - 13:26

Eric Gershon

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Michael Kodas, author of Megafire and associate director of CU Boulder's Center for Environmental Journalism, talks about the wildfire season ahead and why it's shaping up to be a bad one.

Author Michael Kodas discusses what we can expect from this year's wildfire season.

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Wildfire

CU Research on Marshall Fire Looks to the Future

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