Boulder County low-income homeowners get free fire mitigation work

BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — This December will mark three years since the Marshall Fire burned thousands of acres and hundreds of homes. While communities are still rebuilding from the fire, others are building against future fires.

For the past three weeks, a group of volunteers from Mile High Youth Corps has been stationed at the Sans Souci mobile home park south of Boulder. Crew lead Alicia Harris-Smith said their task was to complete fire mitigation work around the community.

“We’re working on defensible spaces for homes,” Harris-Smith said. “So making non-combustible gravel barriers to protect the home from catching embers from wildfires, … preventing it from spreading throughout the home instead of on the ground.”

In addition to gravel barriers, Harris-Smith said, the team has raked leaves and pulled weeds. She said doing this can reduce a fire’s spread.

“Whenever there’s a wildfire, there’s usually high winds, which causes embers from the vegetation that’s on fire to fly,” she said. “And whenever they get inside these nooks and crannies in the home, it can be very dangerous because it will spark the fire from underneath the home.”

The mobile home park serves residents older than 55 with low incomes.

Peggy Kuhn moved in 17 years ago. She was there the day the Marshall Fire sparked across Highway 93 from her home.

“So, I, at that time, I was going around alerting all the residents,” Kuhn recalled. “I was yelling ‘fire, there’s a fire.'”

Kuhn said she’ll never forget how hard the wind was blowing. She said she stayed up until midnight, paying attention to the winds to make sure they didn’t shift and push the fire toward the park.

“We had 120 mph winds going across,” Kuhn said. “I had a roof land in my yard, three homes lost their roofs, we lost our electrical.”

There’s still work to be done in terms of repairs, but she said the work of the Mile High Youth Corps makes her feel more comfortable in her home.

“It makes me feel safer,” Kuhn said. “It makes me feel like, ‘Yes, I can live here.’ Otherwise, I’m fearful. Fearful at 2 a.m., a grassfire coming across with the wind, the wind hitting one of these homes, starting it on fire and the rest of the community goes up, and we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

The labor and materials were all provided to homeowners at no cost to them. 

Boulder County Wildfire Partners funds the work of the Mile High Youth Corps through the fire mitigation sales tax and a grant from Fire Adapted Colorado.

Wildlife Partners said Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks contracted the Boulder Watershed Collective to purchase materials for the gravel barriers.

“It would be almost impossible for us to do it on our own, so it’s just a wonderful, a wonderful gift to us to have this help,” Kuhn said.