After fierce winds whipped fire out of brush-covered hills on January 7, entire Los Angeles neighborhoods burned down. Within a few days, over 12,000 homes and businesses had been destroyed as flames ringed the city. And it’s not over yet.
The photos of smoldering neighborhoods and distraught residents are horrific and shocking. Could they also presage the kind of wildfire that might overtake Durango, a town of about 20,000 in southwestern Colorado?
It’s a question worth asking. Local fire experts say Los Angeles and Durango are similar in topography. Durango doesn’t experience the hurricane-force Santa Ana winds that pushed the LA fires, but it does often have sustained winds of 30 mph and gusts over 40 mph, which can vault burning embers great distances.
Perhaps more importantly, the big city and the town share the same pattern of development.
Angelenos have long coveted proximity to wooded canyons for their homes. Durango residents crave the same access to nature, pushing housing into canyons. In both places, million-dollar homes have been built among flammable trees.
Other similarities include lax regulations that fail to dissuade wildland builders. Then there’s the question of storing enough water and having sufficient water pressure to fight blazes. Los Angeles ran out of water fast because attacks on simultaneous fires quickly drew down supplies.
Durango uses around four million gallons daily and has two weeks of storage in its Terminal Reservoir. But if the city ran a dozen or more high-flow hydrants, water pressure would plummet in days. Here’s a suggestion: Prioritize building the $11.3-million-dollar, 36-inch proposed water line from Lake Nighthorse, a nearby reservoir, to the city system, boosting raw water storage to four months.
Durango has a history of large wildfires. In 2002, the 73,000-acre Missionary Ridge Fire torched 46 structures. The town suffered another blow in 2018 when wildfire ringed the town, burning 54,130 acres.
Randy Black, Durango Fire Protection District Fire Chief, is quick to point out that not one structure was lost in 2018, thanks to a coordinated effort by local and state crews. “We got lucky,” he said. “If the June 2018 fire happened later in the season, resources wouldn’t have been available.” Also key were carefully forged relationships among regional firefighting resources, Black said, along with extensive planning.
One hundred eighty employees and volunteers staff the Durango Fire District, which covers both the city and a 325-square-mile swath of the county. Black said they focus on what he calls the most important aspect of firefighting—mitigation meant to keep wildland fires from starting in the first place.
That means working to create fire breaks between wildlands and urban areas and removing fuels within the urban core. The town participates by thinning wooded areas on its perimeter, and federal agencies manage both thinning and controlled burns.
“If you don’t do the fire mitigation, you run the risk of whole neighborhoods catching on fire,” Black said.
Another similarity between Los Angeles and Durango is that both share difficulty in getting fire insurance. Some insurers have pulled out of California entirely, and when the Durango Fire District built its new in-town firehouse last year, Black said, no one would insure the structure at first. Colorado insurance companies had just weathered 10 years of property losses to wildland fire, and they were loath to take chances.
Colorado’s new, state-backed Fair Plan offers a last resort for home insurance, but it’s bare-bones coverage of homes worth up to $750,000. With building costs in Durango now estimated to be $500 to $700 per square foot, losing a 2,000-square-foot home to wildfire means rebuilding a much smaller house.
I’ve talked to many wildland fire experts about how towns can fight these multiple, destructive blazes. Their suggestions boil down to three basics:
First, make building requirements stringent for any home proposed in wildlands.
Second, get residents involved. The Durango Fire District offers homeowners free assessments of fire risk, and it also advises the creation of three zones around a house: Remove anything flammable within five feet, include a turnaround big enough for fire vehicles, and allow only widely spaced trees and mown grass out to 100 feet.
A third step is “hardening” existing structures with fireproof building materials. Black, who built his own house, said he chose cement siding and a metal roof.
If homeowners take these steps, say insurers, they stand a better chance of keeping their insurance policies. 24 people have lost their lives in the Los Angeles fires as of January 12. Their deaths are a wakeup call to everyone living in the West—especially Durango.
Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to lively discussion about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.
This column was published in the following newspapers:
01/14/2025 | Aspen Daily News | Aspen | CO |
01/14/2025 | Steamboat Pilot | Steamboat Springs | CO |
01/14/2025 | Denver Post | Denver | CO |
01/14/2025 | The Mountain Mail | Pagosa Springs | CO |
01/15/2025 | Grand Junction Daily Sentinel | Grand Junction | CO |
01/16/2025 | Wyoming Tribune Eagle | Cheyenne | WY |
01/16/2025 | Montrose Daily Press | Montrose | CO |
01/16/2025 | Durango Herald | Durango | CO |
01/16/2025 | Taos News | Taos | NM |
01/16/2025 | Gunnison Times | Gunnison | CO |
01/17/2025 | Rapid City Journal | Rapid City | SD |
01/16/2025 | Big Pivots | Denver | CO |
01/17/2025 | Laramie Boomerang | Laramie | WY |
01/17/2025 | Pagosa Springs Sun | Pagosa Springs | CO |
01/18/2025 | Vail Daily | Vail | CO |
01/18/2025 | Cochise County Herald Review | Cochise County | AZ |
01/13/2025 | Moab Times Independent | Moab | UT |
01/14/2025 | Gallup Independent | Gallup | NM |
01/17/2025 | Pagosa Springs Sun | Pagosa Springs | CO |
01/16/2025 | Durango Telegraph | Durango | CO |
01/19/2025 | Colorado Springs Gazette | Colorado Springs | Co |
01/21/2025 | High Country Shopper | Paonia | CO |
01/20/2025 | Explore Big Sky | Big Sky | MT |
01/22/2025 | Trinidad Chronicle News | Trinidad | CO |
01/21/2025 | KVNF Radio | Paonia | CO |
01/23/2025 | Denver Gazette | Denver | CO |
I have to take issue with your comparison of Durango with the Los Angeles communities hit with devastating wild fires last week. First off, unless you have experienced a Santa Ana wind first hand, you would know that there is no such weather like that it in Durango. Too, while LA lacks water storage due to incompetent leaders, we have several large bodies of water nearby plus the Anamas River. Finally, high end housing in La Plata county is not concentrated in small geographical areas like Malibu.
Dennis, Hydrants ran dry in Los Angeles because of the multi-front fires. If you think that fire can’t close in on the city in multiple locations is impossible, just look at the 416 Fire burn scars. Further, saying we have large bodies of water nearby is misleading. We don’t have access to Nighthorse even though we own a good deal of water there. We have drawn water supplies down in several dry years to critical levels. Lemon was drawn down during those years as well. Ask the city council how close we were to water restrictions. Until the 36-inch pipeline project is underway, and I am told cost projections have doubled in the last two years, then we are not water secure.
You don’t think that in an emergency that we wouldn’t have access to water in Nighthorse? I live on the Anamas river and watched the 416 fire start just before noon. I have seen first hand helicopters pull water from the river for the 416 fire as well as the Missionary Ridge fire. The real damage came from the mud flows across 550. I lived in SoCal for almost 50 years and in Durango for over 30 years. I have never experienced anything like the Santa Ana winds since moving to SW Colorado.
You’re the expert.
Thanks for this one Dave. It’s hard to please the “expert commenters”. Having spent eighteen years in NPS and USFS wildland fire I feel your thoughts are valid. The lack of water is an issue everywhere in the west yet the homeowner mitigation effort is lacking especially when I drive through towns like Evergreen. I know for a fact that many homeowners received free mitigation during the 416 Fire by fire crews doing mitigation work they shouldn’t have had to instead of actively fighting the fire.
Thanks Rick,
I don’t think the new reality of hotter dryer summers combined with poor snowpack situations like this year have sunk in. The La Plata County emergency management head person has a graveled turnaround that encircles her house. She slays away in summers to beat back trees and brush. If she’s doing that, then homeowners need to do the same. The lazy person who expects a personal slurry bomber is in for a rude surprise in a conflagration. Fire crews will roll up, mark an X for hopeless, and move onto a defensible property.
Thank you for the article. I would suggest 1 change though. The LA fires are not a wake up call. The wake up call happened in 1970 with the first Earth Day. This is the ship’s klaxon alerting that the ship is sinking, it is the tornado siren announcing your house is about to be destroyed, it is the Civil Defense siren warning of a nuclear attack. We are way beyond wake up call, this is now approaching desperation.