NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 29

to eliminate a sprinkler requirement
for larger homes, a measure it
had approved in 2006. At present,
individual homes are not subject to
restrictions on how or where they
can be built, and according to The
Colorado Springs Gazette, the county master plans for development
make no mention of wildfire.
A primary reason for the different
approaches between the county
and the county's largest city are the
differences in resources, demographics, and governmental structure. Unlike Colorado Springs, the
county has no universal fire code

do. They want to be left alone."
According to The Gazette, when
it comes to wildfire, regulating
and monitoring development in El
Paso County is a task that county
government shares with more than
two-dozen fire districts, with neither ideal for the role. "It's not the
county's role to be the firefighter or
the technical expert, but we've got
20-plus volunteer fire departments...but is it really their role?"
asked Mark Gebhart, the deputy
director of the El Paso County Development Services Department, in
a Gazette article. "There's not really

"You will never get everybody to agree-
the best you can expect is for people
to begrudgingly go along. But they don't
have to be happy about it. They just
have to do it."
and is comprised of more than 26
fire districts, which stretch from the
western foothills to eastern plains.
Having so many political entities
and competing interests makes a
universal fire code difficult to implement, County Commissioner Dennis
Hisey told The Gazette in 2015.
"We did have that discussion
about a county-wide fire code (after
the Black Forest Fire)...but we just
finally determined that we weren't
going to get there," he said. "There
were too many differences-it was a
one-size-doesn't-fit-all."
Marla Novack, the director of
Governmental Affairs at the Housing
& Building Association of Colorado
Springs, attended those discussions
in the aftermath of the fire. She
said that fire districts in the county
pushed for an ordinance similar to
what Colorado Springs passed, but
as a blanket mandate across the
county, not just in the hillside areas
as the city had done. Ultimately,
the effort failed, she said, because
it was seen as overreaching and
wasn't supported by residents.
"Residents in the county are
different than the residents in the
city of Colorado Springs," Novack
said. "They move out here because
they want to live in the woods, and
they don't want to be told what to

an overriding person or entity over
those fire districts. They are their
own little governments, and many
of them have their own sets of fire
departments or district regulations
that are not zoning-code tied."
Lacey said that, even with his
decades of experience and a professional staff behind him, passing
the ordinance in Colorado Springs
required a massive effort. He
sympathizes with smaller volunteer
departments with fewer resources.
"The public process is grueling
and intensive-it's not as easy as
scheduling a meeting at a school on
a Thursday night for two hours," he
said. "It took us six months to get
the ordinance passed. You have to
schedule these meetings around
the clock, and many people are not
listening real well at that point."
Lacey emphasizes that the
success in Colorado Springs doesn't
necessarily serve as a template for
other communities. "The message
must be tailored specifically to your
community," he said. "You have
different demographics, education
levels, fear factors, motivation
levels. You can't take a boilerplate
process and go somewhere else
with it. If we'd tried to do this somewhere else, we'd have been run out
of town." -J.R.

approve permits quickly by limiting public review.
The hope is for new buildings to be well underway
by spring. Many city officials, including the mayor,
support this victim-centric approach.
Others, though, have expressed concern.
Santa Rosa Councilwoman Julie Combs argued
at a meeting in October that it's shortsighted to
allow homes to be reconstructed before potential
changes to fire safety standards can be considered
to protect them. "I am very concerned to have
places that have just burned down be built in a
fire hazard area not meet the new codes that come
from our learning from this incident," Combs said,
according to The Press Democrat.
Residents have expressed similar concerns.
"Putting our community in a fire-prone area has
jeopardized all of us and frightened us horribly,"
resident Marsha Taylor told the city council. "We
need to slow down, we need to be thoughtful
and we need to look at the urban planning mistakes that we have made in the past and rethink
them now, and not repeat those errors over and
over again."
But voices of caution seem to be losing out
to those wanting to return things to normal as
swiftly as possible. Sentiment for the victims and
easing their path to recovery is understandably
high. "We ought to be listening to what [residents] want, not telling them what's best for
them," Councilman Tom Schwedhelm, a Coffey
Park resident, said.
The Press Democrat editorial director, Paul
Gullixon, was forceful in his rebuke of any argument for new codes and regulations. "No, we do
not 'have to figure out, plan and put in place' new
rules for [fire victims] to follow. They have a right
to build their houses the way they were and...
my guess is they don't need to be reminded of
the fire dangers. I can't imagine anything more
frustrating for these residents, after all they have
been through, than having people rubbing their
hands in hopes of using this fire to correct some
past planning mistake. This catastrophe is many
things. But it is not an opportunity for a community do-over."
EVEN AS SCIENCE'S KNOWLEDGE of wildfires and the causes of home ignition grows, the
number of homes destroyed by wildfire each year
is on the rise.
There is no comprehensive method for tracking how many homes are lost each year in the
U.S., but the National Interagency Fire Center
(NIFC) does track loss numbers for the nation's
largest wildfire incidents. Tallying those losses
offers a glimpse of a troubling trend. From 1985
to 2000, NIFC data shows that an annual average
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - January/February 2018