Bailey Wildfires - Can we get out alive?

The goal of this project is to help create the roadway conditions for a safe wildfire evacuation.

When the Park County Sherriff calls for a mandatory wildfire evacuation there will be some level of chaos. There may be limited visibility due to smoke. There may be flying embers in the air. The call could happen with little warning and at any time of the day or night. School buses may be in route. Hundreds of vehicles may be attempting to evacuate. Working parents may be rushing back from Metro Denver to evacuate their family. First responders and heavy equipment will be rushing in toward the fire.

In the midst of this chaos, it is absolutely essential that our major evacuation routes are not in flames.

The weakest link in this scenario will be any choke point on our major emergency evacuation routes. Choke points are sections of road that have heavy fuel loads on one or both sides of the right-of-way that could become blocked by wildfire, trapping evacuees. 

Our mission is to clear these bottlenecks prior to an event to ensure that you and your loved ones are able to evacuate safely.

What's already been done. The foundation  

1. Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Platte Canyon Fire Protection District (PCFPD) and Park County Government that allows Platte Fire to perform wildfire mitigation in county road rights-of-way. The MOU is now signed and in place. PCFPD was selected to do the work based on their wildfire knowledge. They have the skill sets, and equipment to properly and safely fire mitigate our roadways.
2. Identification of major emergency evacuation routes. These are the routes that serve both a large number of residents and which will be needed to accomodate a high volume of evacuating vehicle traffic.

Our Major Emergency Evacuation Routes

1. CR43 and Shelton Drive. This one way in one way out emergency evacuation route serves over 2,500 residential parcels, Tomahawk Girl Scout Ranch, Deer Creek Elementary, and Id-Ra-Ha-Je Christain Camp.
2. CR72, Rosalie Road, and Roland Valley Drive. These interconnected evacuation routes serve over 1,500 residential parcels and currently have multiple potential choke points.
3. Mount Evans Blvd, Hidden Valley Blvd, and Nova Road. These emergency evacuation routes serve over 500 residential parcels. Choke points on Mount Evans Blvd have the potential to block the evacuation of this entire community

What will happen next. How will we spend this investment in our safety. 

1. We are crowd funding this on our own as a community of concerned homeowners, business owners, ranchers, civic groups, and other stakeholders. Traditional sources of funds for wildfire mitigation specifically exclude roadway mitigation. Think of this $100,000 project as an investment in our collective safety.
2. IOBY (In Our Back Yard) will serve as our Crowd Funding platform and fiscal sponsor. Your donation/investment will be tax deductible and IOBY will provide third party assurance that the monies collected are spent for the purpose intended.
3. Working with the Sheriff and School District, Platte Fire will identify the most critical evacuation route choke points. 
4. Platte Fire will prioritize the most critical choke points based on life safety. 
5. Where needed, Platte Fire will arrange with adjacent private property owners to mitigate beyond the county right-of-way to increase the margin of safety.
6. Platte Fire will schedule and mitigate those critical choke points based on a judgement of life safety ranking. 

We are launching this project because the current condition of our major evacuation routes poses a threat to life safety.

About Fire Adapted Bailey

Fire Adapted Bailey is a non-profit umbrella organization for Firewise Communities in the Bailey area.  We are unpaid volunteers working to educate the public about the risks of a wildfire and what we can do as individual property owners, business owners, subdivisions, and as a broader community to mitigate those risks. As we assess our level of readiness before, during, and after a wildfire event; mitigation our major evacuation roadways is the most critical and urgent priority.

How did we get to here?

The Bailey area forests where once a Ponderosa savanna. These trees were widely spaced and 4 to 5 feet in diameter. In the mid to late 1800's we cut them down and used the lumber to build Denver. At about the same time we began to cattle ranch and processed the beef to feed Denver. Starting in 1960's we started to subdivide the ranches and build homes to house a growing Metro Denver.  In 1910, we established a national policy of extinguishing every forest fire by 10AM the next morning. The unintended consequence of taking fire out of the forest ecosystem is that we've added millions of additional trees to the fire adapted forest we inherited from Ann and Bill Bailey. In short, we have created the conditions for a catastrophic wildfire.  

It took 150 years to create this imbalance, and it will take 2 or 3 generations restore the forest to it's original state. Given the scale of the challenge, the first order of business must be to mitigate our major county road rights-of-way and create the conditions for a safer emergency evacuation.

That is our WHY.