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.

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Meanwhile, in California, some fire insurers have lost so much money they’ve pulled out of the state. Overall, fire insurance is becoming as expensive and unpredictable as the natural disasters—not just wildfires but also hail and windstorms—that are driving up rate increases. In some places, increases are as much as 1,000% for houses and condos nestled close to trees.

In Colorado, Tiffany Lockwood said she was dropped twice by fire insurance carriers over the 10 years she’s lived in Evergreen, a heavily forested exurb of Denver.

A former Florida resident, Lockwood, 59, only has one way out in case of a wildfire—and even then she’ll have little warning. “When I lived in Florida,” she said, “we knew four days ahead when a hurricane was coming. Here we get 40 minutes.”

Lockwood thinks insurance companies are running scared and giving impossible directives. One insurer asked her to remove all the shrubs and trees within 30 feet of the house. But the plan meant taking down a lot of her neighbor’s trees, too.

Evergreen’s attraction is that residents live amidst towering conifer trees. But red zones on fire maps are being expanded all over Colorado after several recent large forest fires and the wind-driven Marshall grassfire outside of Boulder, in December 2021. It destroyed more than 1,000 suburban homes and was the state’s most expensive fire yet. Formerly “safe” places are now described as at-risk.

Jeff Geslin lives in high and dry La Plata County, in southwestern Colorado, surrounded by 35 acres of piñon and juniper trees. He and his wife Lorna are used to remediation plans, he said, and when their insurance increases, “I just pay it, no questions asked.”

But they were shocked when their condo association in Summit County, governing their second home, lost its insurance policy.

“It might be because we’re close to Forest Service land,” Geslin said, “which must be more risk.” Geslin was assessed $6,772 extra for the new policy the Homeowners Association managed to find—an increase of 1,000%.

Colorado State Senator Dylan Roberts is working on legislation to insure larger structures. “I’ve gotten calls about insurance for the last year if not two years,” he said. “The single-family upset has quieted down, but the big thing I hear about is HOA and condo buildings.”

The state already has what is called the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan in place for smaller buildings when insurance companies refuse to underwrite traditional coverage. It’s backed by private insurers and administered by an appointed board of insurance professionals.

“We hope to insure no one,” said FAIR Plan board member Carole Walker. She’s the executive director of an insurance trade group covering, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

“This is insurance of last resort,” she said, “as we don’t want to compete with private insurers. They’re  struggling after 10 straight years of unprofitability in property insurance.”

The FAIR Plan board, which plans to sell policies late next year, hired industry veteran Kelly Campbell as executive director this May. It will offer bare-bones coverage with high deductibles and low maximum amounts. The plan would offer coverage of $5 million per commercial structure and $750,000 per house.

“Everything has escalated,” said Walker. “Colorado is in that perfect storm of catastrophes. The number of claims and the cost to pay those claims is at a record pace. Add in the escalating number of events like hail and wildfire, and it’s the hardest insurance market in a generation.”

Walker says Colorado established a resiliency code board via state law in 2023, with a mandate of hardening structures with fire-resistant siding, metal roofs and landscaping. “We need confidence back in the marketplace,” she said about the board. “Ultimately, this is a life-safety issue because wildfire knows no boundaries. You’re dependent on your neighbor.”

Kevin Parks, a State Farm insurer in Western Colorado, has some advice for Western homeowners: “Widen your driveway and road to 20 feet, install a turnaround big enough for fire vehicles, remove shrubs and trees close to your house, and add a perimeter of gravel all around your structure. Finally, hope you live where two roads lead to your house.”

In this new age of longer and meaner fire seasons, Parks added, “The fire is coming—now it’s a question of being ready.”

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.

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