Removing the Trouble from the East Troublesome Fire

It was the summer of 2020 when Colorado’s Western Slope became engulfed in flames from nearby forest fires. Ash rained down from the smoke-filled sky in the mountain towns of Granby and Grand Lake. Residents began receiving warning calls and within fifteen minutes, the warnings became calls for evacuation.

O’Flaherty said that one of the most essential steps people need to take is to get a certified copy of their insurance policy after loss. She said by statute, an insurance company has 30 days to provide a copy of the policy to someone after requesting it in writing. People should then read and make sure they understand what coverages are available.

When looking at their insurance policy, homeowners should look for other structure coverage that may be listed, including garages, barns, sheds and others, their replacement cost coverage, their extended cost coverage, their ordinance and law coverage, as well as the loss of use coverage.

Residents should also make a list of all of their belongings with the age and cost of each item. This includes taking pictures and capturing the contents of every drawer, dresser and cabinet.

“Because in order to successfully claim your policy limits, you’re going to have to drill down to that level of detail,” O’Flaherty said.

Krones had a full year to document his losses with as much detail as possible and turn it into his attorney.

“The first main step is documenting the loss, and that’s both through photos, but also through inventory, listing everything that you lost, down to pairs of socks and that random drawer in the kitchen (where) you just put everything in,” Krones said.

Krones said a year after the fire, he was just able to provide a draft of his losses and still needs to complete the list.

“It’s documenting all of that as specifically as you can with prices, and ages, and condition,” Krones said.  “It’s very time consuming, I haven’t really finished it. I just was able to provide my attorney with a draft, and I had one year to do it.”

The valuables that Krones had collected throughout his life were gone, including books, regalia and art.

“There were some very both sentimental and rare valuables that I lost, books especially and of course that’s depressing because I’ve spent 31 years collecting all of that, but more than that, it’s like, ‘What did I do wrong?’ because, I came to this point, I was able to buy a house and then it was gone,” he said.

O’Flaherty said many of her clients have not yet provided her with their list of inventory detailing their losses.

O’Flaherty said there is a plan to introduce a new bill to the upcoming legislative session that will address how to make it easier for people to rebuild their homes. This insurance reform is sponsored by Rep. Judy Amabile and is expected to state that if a person has a total catastrophic loss due to a wildfire, their policy limits for their contents will get paid out. The intent of the bill is to address the lack of resources for people and the timing of rebuilding due to weather in Colorado.

Colorado’s 2020 Fire Season History

Along with the East Troublesome Fire, Colorado experienced two more of the largest-recorded wildfires in the state’s history in 2020: the Pine Gulch Fire and the Cameron Peak Fire. The fires resulted in hundreds of damaged homes and structures, evacuations and thousands of burned acres. The East Troublesome Fire alone damaged 469 residential and outbuilding structures and burned 208,913 acres.

On Oct. 23, the people of Grand Lake held an event to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the East Troublesome Fire. The event was dedicated to the firefighters and first responders who worked during the time of the wildfires.

“It’s amazing how the fire communities come together,” said Ryan Brock, Krone’s neighbor who also lost his home in the fire. “My daughter is still at the point where if she sees a firefighter, she gets freaked out.”

Donna Nemeth, United States Forest Service regional press officer for the Rocky Mountain Region, said Colorado experienced 1,078 wildfires in the 2020 fire season, which consumed 625,356 acres.

Despite the wildfires’ destruction, Nemeth said as a land management agency, the Forest Service does not directly help those who have lost their homes to wildfires. The agency works with local and state fire protection resources to provide mitigation and prevention education, hazardous fuels treatments around communities and collaborative partnerships aimed at reducing wildfire risks.

Nemeth said the Forest Service is committed to maintaining and creating resilient landscapes to ensure that forests and grasslands can continue providing goods and services to people.

“Restoration work aims to create and maintain healthy, resilient forests that provide clean air and water, carbon sequestration, habitat for native fish and wildlife, forest products, outdoor recreation opportunities, and jobs in rural communities,” Nemeth said. “As wildfire threats increase in the wildland urban interface, the Forest Service encourages and educates communities on how to reduce wildfire risk by taking actions that will protect homes, neighborhoods, and entire communities from wildfires.”

Nemeth said the Forest Service welcomes any support that will help address wildfire awareness, prevention and mitigation.

“Having more resources out there for homeowners and landowners to protect their lands,” Krones said. “There are a lot of private organizations and private groups who have the materials out there to teach about being fire wise and defensible space around your home, but not a lot of people either pay attention or know that that’s an option. It’s very much a community effort.”

To help with the recovery process, Congressman Joe Neguse announced on Sept. 9 his securement of over $50 billion to establish a 21st Century Climate Conservation Corps. Neguse proposed $10 billion of the funding go towards workers and jobs to help launch the program and $40 billion to fund community resilience and wildfire preparedness projects through the Department of Interior and the U.S. Forest Service.

The funding is broken down into several categories. Of the $50 billion, $35 billion is appropriated to the U.S. Forest Service for wildfire preparedness projects and forest restoration. Over five billion dollars is appropriated to the Department of Interior to fund wildfire preparedness, community resilience projects and investments in the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership and Every Kid Outdoors program. An additional $4.5 billion is allocated to the Forest Service for Civilian Climate Corps staff and salaries and another $4.5 billion will be appropriated to the Department of Labor to fund new workers and job training programs for the Civilian Climate Corps.

Sally Tucker, Neguse’s Communications Director, said projects from this funding could include wildfire suppression, restoring wildlife habitat, flood mitigation, watershed protection, supporting urban parks, and working on national park trails and roads.

“Currently these funds are included in the Build Back Better Act,” Tucker said in an email. “This bill will be considered in the House in the coming weeks and then will head to the Senate and the President’s desk for signature.”

Overgrown forests in North America are a key issue that needs to be urgently fixed, according to Krones. He believes that Neguse has been helpful towards the communities that were affected by the wildfires.

“He has been really good, he kind of jumped on that fairly quickly and strongly,” he said. “I think it comes down to two parts, one is natural resource conservation and being more holistic about our management,” he said. “A lot of natural resource production and use is driven by the private market and not necessarily by the long-term perspectives of the health of the land and resources.” For fire mitigation, flood control and wildlife populations, for instance.

“This means that while we ought to be harvesting trees from the forests and managing the lands with more attention paid to the effects of our use and habitation amongst those resources, we ultimately aren’t because at least for the trees in Grand County and on rangelands throughout the West, they aren’t all economically viable for businesses,” Krones said. “That doesn’t make economic sense at the moment, despite the fact that there will be greater costs down the road when the forests of those ‘unviable’ trees become tinderboxes and result in incidents like the East Troublesome Fire.”

Krones said the private industries are not to blame entirely for the wildfires because there are several factors involved, such as large-scale preservation of such resources – like no controlled burns or no timber harvesting.

“That is why our forests are so overgrown, (in) North American forests, there’s very little worthwhile wood in them, but that doesn't mean that we should let it all grow,” he explained. “I hope that his efforts and the efforts of his colleagues in (Washington) D.C. come to understanding and putting funding towards being able to log and maintain the forests on a natural level, instead of just saying, ‘There’s no money so we’re just not going to cut the trees down.”

Controlling forests and tree growth, according to Krones, is essential for wildfire prevention.

“This is 150 years coming, at least, if not 450 years of not utilizing our forest the way we should be,” he said. “As people build in these areas, we need to know what to do with our homes.”